Firebrands of 'ecoterrorism' set sights on urban sprawl

Environmental activism's darker side is turning from wild nature to the urban jungle. Among its targets: posh housing developments, car dealerships hawking sport utility vehicles, and military-recruiting stations.

The latest attack came last weekend when a large condominium project under construction in an upscale San Diego neighborhood burned to the ground. A banner stretched across the charred site read: "If you build it - we will burn it. The E.L.F.s are mad." In e-mails to regional newspapers, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) claimed responsibility for the conflagration that also damaged nearby homes. [Editor's note: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the name of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).]

Property damage in the name of environmental protection dates back to the "monkey wrenching" advocated by groups like Earth First. But trashing logging trucks and driving spikes into old-growth trees pales in comparison to recent events - arson and vandalism of luxury homes, and violent assaults on the symbols of urban sprawl. SUVs have been vandalized or firebombed in Santa Cruz, Calif., Eugene, Ore., and Erie, Pa. At the US Navy recruiting headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., cars were spray painted with antiwar messages and a truck was set on fire. The FBI now considers such attacks - dubbed "ecoterrorism" - to be America's most serious form of domestic terror.

Still, it's not clear why activists targeted the San Diego apartments. Despite the size of the complex - at 1,500 units, it's one of southern California's largest apartment-construction projects - the La Jolla Crossroads was hardly controversial, raising nary an eyebrow when plans came before city officials a few years back.

"It wasn't a big item on our radar," says Richard Miller, chair of the local Sierra Club chapter. The condos did take up open space and will of course contribute to urban growth and traffic, Mr. Miller says. But on the other hand, the project met environmentalists' goals, providing housing for hundreds of people in a fairly small space and setting aside apartments for poor and middle-income residents.

Until the San Diego fire, the largest such attack was the 1998 burning of a new ski resort in Vail, Colo., which critics had said would eliminate a vast habitat for the threatened Canada lynx.

The fundamental factor behind the ELF - apparently the main motivator of such attacks - is that "the profit motive caused and reinforced by the capitalist society is destroying all life on this planet," according to the ELF website. "The only way, at this point in time, to stop that continued destruction of life is to ... take the profit motive out of killing."

ELF "guidelines" include taking "all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human." But they also include a call to "inflict economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment."

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