Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves",[1] is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".
The ELF was founded in Brighton in the United Kingdom in 1992,[2] and spread to the rest of Europe by 1994. The ELF acronym derived from the original ELF guerilla group, the Environmental Life Force, that was founded in 1977 in Santa Cruz, California by activist John Clark Hanna. The Earth Liberation Front is now an international organization with actions reported in 17 countries[3][4][5] and is widely regarded as descending from Animal Liberation Front because of the relationship and cooperation between the two movements.[6] Using the same leaderless resistance model, as well as similar guidelines to the ALF,[2] sympathizers say that it is an eco-defense group dedicated to taking the profit motive out of environmental destruction by causing economic damage to businesses through the use of property damage.[7]
The ELF was classified as the top "domestic terror" threat in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in February 2001,[8][9][10] and its members classified as eco-terrorists.[11][12] Despite the lack of deaths from ELF attacks, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism has said, "I think we're lucky. Once you set one of these fires they can go way out of control."[13] The name came to public prominence when they were featured on the television show 60 Minutes in 2005.[14] The group was further highlighted in the 2011 Academy Award–nominated documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.[15] (from wikipedia)