Earth Liberation Front - Structure and Aims

Structure and Aims

ELF "monkeywrenching" is carried out against facilities and companies involved in logging, genetic engineering, GMO crops, deforestation, sport utility vehicle (SUV) sales, urban sprawl, rural cluster and developments with larger homes, energy production and distribution, and a wide variety of other activities, all charged by the ELF with exploiting the Earth, its environment and inhabitants.

The Earth Liberation Front has no formal leadership, hierarchy, membership or official spokesperson and is entirely decentralized; instead consisting of individuals or cells who choose the term as a banner to use. Individuals are commonly known to work in affinity groups, known as cells, and are usually self-funded.

Techniques involve destruction of property, by either using tools to disable or the use of arson to destroy what activists believe is being used to injure animals, people or the environment. These actions are sometimes called ecotage and there are marked differences between their actions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

With many different reasons why ELF activists carry out economic sabotage, a communique to the press claiming the responsibility for an arson against urban sprawl in December 2000, described the reason a cell took an action. As Elves usually do, they claimed that burning down the house was non-violent, because it was searched for any living creatures; an issue which is much debated within the environmental movement.

Some of the most common and notable attacks are against the development of multi-million dollar houses, a frequent target in the ELF campaign. In a communique to the press from the group's "above-ground spokesperson", Craig Rosebraugh, that was later published in The Environmental Magazine, the group said in November 2000:

Urban sprawl has undoubtedly served to alter nearly 90 percent of Long Island's habitats, either by physically removing them, paving them, or polluting them with toxic man-made materials, making them either undesirable or unsustainable for most species.