Ecotage

The word was popularised by Sam Love and David Obst in their 1972 anthology Ecotage!, which combined "ecology" and "sabotage". Although clandestine sabotage for environmental ends predates the term, ecotage entered the wider environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s through the writings of Edward Abbey, whose 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired the founding of the radical group Earth First! and the publication of Dave Foreman's 1985 field guide Ecodefense. From the 1990s onwards, ecotage in the United States was associated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF), whose campaigns of arson became the focus of the Operation Backfire investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The classification of ecotage is contested. Governments and industry groups in the United States have frequently described it as a form of eco-terrorism, and convictions of ecotage participants have, in several cases, carried a terrorism enhancement at sentencing. Activists, academics and a number of legal scholars dispute this framing, arguing that property destruction without intent to harm people falls outside conventional definitions of terrorism. In the 2020s, the debate has been renewed by Andreas Malm's book How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021) and a corresponding wave of climate-related sabotage in Europe and North America.

Cases

All damage figures below are in United States dollars. Some well-known acts of ecotage have included:

• February 22, 1974 — Concerned about the planned Montague Nuclear Power Plant slated for construction in Montague, MA, activist Sam Lovejoy used a crowbar to topple a 550-foot weather monitoring tower at the future site. Lovejoy then turned himself in to police. The action sparked local resistance against the nuclear plant which led to its cancellation.
• Circa 1969 to 1985 – ecological activist James F. Phillips, operating covertly under the codename "The Fox", carried out a series of ecotage actions and subvertising campaigns against corporations that were polluting the Fox River in Illinois.
• 1998 – Arson of buildings at Vail Mountain in the United States by the ELF (Earth Liberation Front).
• March 11, 1999 – Genetically engineered potatoes uprooted at Crop and Food research centre in New Zealand.
• December 25, 1999 – In Monmouth, Oregon, fire destroyed the main office of the Boise Cascade logging company costing over $1 million ($1.9 million in 2025 dollars). ELF claimed responsibility.
• 2001 – Members of the ELF were prosecuted for setting off a firebomb that caused $7 million in damages ($14 million in 2025 dollars) at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture.
• August 1, 2003 – A 206-unit condominium being built in San Diego, California was burned down causing damage in excess of $20 million ($39 million in 2025 dollars). A 12-foot banner at the scene read "If you build it, we will burn it," signed, "The E.L.F.s are mad."
• August 22, 2003 – Arsonists associated with the ELF attacked several car dealerships in east suburban Los Angeles, burning down a warehouse and vandalizing over 100 vehicles, most of them SUVs or Hummers (chosen for their notoriously poor fuel efficiency) and causing over $1 million in damage ($1.8 million in 2025 dollars).
• 2016 - Activists from Climate Direct Action in the USA turned the emergency valves of 4 pipelines carrying oil to Canada causing the stop of up to 2.8 million barrels of oil a day. In the action the activists had to cause some property damage in order to access both the facilities and unlock the valves; they warned the present workers about what was going to happen.
• From 2016 to 2017 - Activists Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, were responsible for around 6 million dollars damages to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) construction sites and to the pipeline itself. Jessica Reznicek, was sentenced to 96 months imprisonment on June 30, 2021; Ruby Katherine Montoya was sentenced to 6 years.
• August 7, 2023 – Tyre extinguishers drilling holes in 60 SUVs in a Vertu Jaguar showroom in Exeter, Devon, UK for both social and environmental reasons.
• January 20, 2024 – Shut the System activists cut fiber optic cables to many insurance companies in the UK demanding them to immediately end all underwriting for fossil fuel expansion projects.