Earth First! Connections

Earth First!
Earth First! Journal, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702
Phone 520-620-6900 | Fax 4132540057 | Email collective@earthfirstjournal.org

Greenpeace
Greenpeace activists and Earth First!ers regularly share targets, campfires, and jail cells. Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle worked as Greenpeace’s first U.S. National Action Coordinator, and later served on the Greenpeace USA board of directors. In 1995 a German court found that “the collaboration of Greenpeace with the terrorist organization Earth First!” cannot be denied.

Natural Resources Defense Council
In 1997-98, the Trees Foundation, which serves as the fiscal agent for various Earth First! groups, reported to the IRS that it received funding from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Trees noted that the NRDC money was “specifically designated for” three California groups “for their work in the Headwaters Forest protection effort.” One of these groups was the Ecology Center, where Karen Pickett runs the Headwaters campaign. Pickett is also the keeper of the cash for the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.

Another group that NRDC “specifically designated” should get pass-through money from the Trees Foundation was Redwood Justice. Redwood Justice’s main program is paying the legal bills for Earth First! leader Darryl Cherney’s lawsuit against the FBI.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
In the spring and early summer of 1999, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made three donations to the Earth First! Journal. These grants were all made during the time convicted arsonist -- and PETA beneficiary -- Rodney Coronado was editor of the Journal. PETA has also sent money to various Earth First! chapters.

Ruckus Society
Eco-zealot extraordinaire Mike Roselle was a co-founder of both Earth First! and the Ruckus Society. When the Fund for Wild Nature was called the Earth First! Foundation, it took the initiative in supporting the Ruckus Society, which the Fund says “succeeded far beyond any initial hopes.” Of the original three-member board of the Ruckus Society, two were Earth First! co-founders: Roselle and Howie Wolke. Both Ruckus and Earth First! organizations receive money from Roselle's Ecology Center. Among other Ruckus staff members, its “blockades trainer” identifies herself as an Earth First! activist.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The Earth First! Journal always has space for the essays of Paul Watson, founder and generalissimo of the aquatic-terrorist Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Watson described for Journal readers how Rodney Coronado and David Howitt -- then sailing the seas as Sea Shephard crewmen -- sunk three fishing boats. “Right now we‘re in the early stages of World War III,” Watson has argued. “We are the navy to Earth First!‘s army ... Eventually there will be open war.”

SHAC
Convicted arsonist Rodney Coronado sometimes identifies himself with the Animal Liberation Front, sometimes with Earth First!, and sometimes with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Earth First! and SHAC both joined something called the Coalition for Earth and Animal Liberation to protest the World Economic Forum, and SHAC was one of the groups that sponsored the 2003 Earth First! summer gathering.

Sierra Club
In his landmark book Trashing the Economy, Ron Arnold writes: "Defectors from the environmental movement have told us that Earth First! founder Dave Foreman was approached by the Sierra Club and his employer, the Wilderness Society, in 1979 with an offer to fund a new extremist point group for the movement. It would serve the function of making their own demands look more reasonable … Defectors say that Foreman made the deal by himself in a comfortable Wilderness Society office, and accepted the offer on the condition that funding would be steady and adequate, and that his participation was a limited 10-year deal."

Foreman offers evidence for this story's veracity in a quote he provided to Smithsonian magazine: "We thought it would have been useful to have a group to take a tougher position than the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society. It could be sort of secretly controlled by the mainstream and trotted out at hearings to make the Sierra Club or Wilderness Society look moderate."

The intermingling between Earth First!ers and the Sierra Club are significant. One example is Jim Flynn, who serves as editor of the Oregon Sierra Club's Conifer newsletter. He is also the sole officer of Daily Planet Publishing, which produces the Earth First! Journal. Mick Garvin, a self-described "long-time Earth First!er," has chaired a local Sierra Club chapter in Oregon and currently serves as Oregon Chapter Executive Committee Delegate.

Tides Foundation & Tides Center
One of the single largest donations ever received by the Fund for Wild Nature -- formerly called the Earth First! Foundation -- was a $50,000 gift from the Tides Foundation in 1998.