Coyotes and Town Dogs : Earth First! and the Environmental Movement

Chronicles the development of the Earth First! environmental movement and the fortunes of one of its founding members, Dave Foreman, detailing the personalities, tactics, ethical dilemmas, and other components of the environmental struggle. 15,000 first printing.

In the late '70s through the '80s, the radical environmental group Earth First! achieved notoriety by its flamboyant activism while provoking widespread debate on environmental issues. In this lengthy, rambling account, reporter Zakin profiles the group and its major figures: Dave Foreman, Bart Koehler, Tim Mahoney, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Louisa Willcos and Judi Bari. Zakin also describes other leading environmentalist figures from John Muir to David Brower. Earth First! members were disappointed with the national organizations and dismayed by Reagan policies. Devotees of Edward Abbey's The Monkeywrench Gang , they followed the principle of "act now, think later." Zakin describes the group's activities in the West as it confronted loggers, miners and road-builders. She chronicles the rise of anti-environmentalist backlash and violence in northern California, FBI surveillance of Foreman and his companions and their subsequent arrest in 1989 for conspiracy to destroy government property. Foreman, who wrote Confessions of an Eco-Warrior in 1991, was released after agreeing to a plea-bargaining deal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A ranging and generally cogent portrait--and defense--of Earth First!, the activist organization dedicated to the proposition that, as far as Earth is concerned, humans should return to the Pleistocene. Earth First! was born in 1980, the brainchild of four disgruntled wilderness activists tired of the posturing and infighting that had come to represent established environmental groups. Zakin, an environmental journalist, tells us that the four yearned for something purer, for actions that would dramatically bring the plight of the planet to the public's eye. So the group turned to guerrilla theater (unfurling a huge ``crack'' down the front of Glen Canyon Dam), monkey-wrenching, and direct action (sit-ins one hundred feet up old-growth trees) to get their message across. A cultivated anarchy was what they were after: inspired chaos that flew in the face of the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, with their hierarchies and pen pushers--and this confrontational style eventually got Earth First! in trouble. As political theater, the group's members may have been showstoppers, but their say-anything approach alienated many. Zakin chronicles Earth First!'s activities in extraordinary detail while sketching in the many historical influences on the group, from Luddites to Populists to Wobblies. There's no doubt that the author has done her homework, but her relentless bad-girl pose (she slings crudities with the best) can be grating, as can her idolatry of the ecowarriors (when not ``brilliant'' or ``legends,'' they're at least ``inspirational'' or ``getting laid by enthusiastic supporters''). Crisp--though not objective--reportage: a useful complement to Earth First! founder Dave Foreman's Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (1991). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Zakin, a freelance journalist, has written a lively, fast-paced historical account of the sometimes controversial environmental group Earth! First. Beginning and ending her book with the 1989 arrest and 1991 trial of founding member Dave Foreman ( Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, LJ 3/1/91), Zakin traces Foreman's experiences from his days as a Washington lobbyist to his involvement with several colorful personalities, or "buckaroos," who eventually became the nucleus of Earth! First. Zakin chronicles the group's various environmental activities, including the struggle over Black Mesa in Arizona, the "cracking" of Glen Canyon Dam, and tree spiking in the Pacific Northwest. Zakin also provides a good analysis of the environmental movement, both historical and contemporary, and shows the relationship between Earth! First and such groups as the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club. This solid work should be purchased where interest warrants.
- Eva Lautemann, DeKalb Coll. Lib., Clarkston, Ga.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.