Violence Escalates in the Name of Environmentalism

Call it ecoterrorism. Call it sabotage. Call it sending a message.

By whatever name, the $12 million in arson damage at the tony Vail, Colo., ski resort last week seems to underscore a growing militancy in environmental protest tactics.

While fringe groups have long made their point with a tree spike or a can of paint thrown on a fur coat, some of the latest incidents here and around the world represent a new level of boldness and belligerence. In recent months:

* Environmental radicals are suspected in a string of more than 160 bombings, shootings, and other acts of violence aimed at the petroleum industry in Canada's Alberta province.

* Animal-rights activists have released thousands of minks from fur farms in Britain and Sweden. They are now causing widespread damage to other species they prey on.

* Ecovandals in Wyoming were blamed for snipping 260 sections of barbed-wire fence in June as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association was meeting. Their apparent pique: cattle grazing on public lands.

"It seems as though the incidents are becoming more severe, and at a more frequent rate," says Craig Rosebraugh, spokesman for the Liberation Collective environmental group in Portland, Ore., which expresses solidarity with the shadowy group claiming responsibility for the fires at Vail, Colo.

A series of seven fires, which damaged four chair lifts and several buildings, has jolted America's busiest ski area just weeks before the Nov. 6 season is scheduled to kick off.

While most mainstream environmental groups have condemned the acts, experts say the arson may result from growing frustration among some environmentalists as they fail to make their case in established legal and political forums. At the same time, experts say some activists are becoming more emboldened because they know saboteurs usually elude capture.

"This could be the beginning, sadly, of this kind of [violent, left-wing] protest movement," says Richard Dekmejian, who studies terrorism and is a professor of political science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "This is quite nasty - and massive."

Certainly, environmental protests are nothing new.

When it comes to saving forests, activists have chained themselves to trees, sabotaged bulldozers, and "spiked" trees with metal and ceramic to destroy loggers' chainsaws. The New York Times noted an incident in southern New Mexico where cattle were gunned down with an AK-47 to protest grazing on public land.

The Earth Liberation Front, which has claimed credit for the Vail fires and whose numbers and membership remain anonymous, has claimed past acts ranging from spraying red paint on the Mexican consulate in Boston to burning a Burns, Ore., horse corral, causing a reported $450,000 in damage.

As far back as 1987, the Animal Liberation Front, a group sometimes linked to the Earth Liberation Front, caused a reported $3.5 million in damage after setting fire to an animal diagnostic laboratory at the University of California at Davis.

But no one incident seems to have equaled the wallop inflicted on Vail.

John Kundts, an FBI special agent in Denver, is not yet willing to classify the Vail fires as ecoterrorism, but says, "It's an extremely large loss, and it's significant when compared to other arson of this type." He adds: "It's the biggest loss of this type associated with the ski industry."

Local, state, and federal law-enforcement officials who have swarmed to the site say the fires erupted on Vail Mountain about 4 a.m. last Monday. No one was injured - although four hunters sleeping on the mountain had a close brush with the flames. The 500-seat, heavy-timber Two Elk Lodge restaurant burned to the ground, and flames on the 11,000-foot mountain damaged four ski lifts.

The damaged facilities are near a disputed, 885-acre Vail ski expansion that some argue will destroy a possible lynx habitat. The expansion, the subject of lawsuits and heated town meetings, was recently approved, and work began on it three days before the fires.

Page: 1 | 2