The Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS - 1102-BC) documents activities between 1983 and 2008. A principle goal of Earth First! was the preservation of forested lands and the expansion of wilderness areas. The collection is divided into six series. The first series contains information about the organization itself, including administrative proceedings, the Earth First! journal, meetings, and debates. The next three series detail correspondence, policies, and newspaper articles regarding the organization and different environmental issues. The fifth series contains newsletters from several environmental organizations such as the Colorado Wild Newsletter, the Blackcountry journal and the Forest Watch Newsbrief. Finally, the last series includes six sub-series grouped around larger themes (i.e. Forests, Grazing, Logging, Mining, Public Lands, and Timber Sales.) that occasionally overlap in content.
Dave Foreman, one of the founders of Earth First! Undated photo from his obituary in the Arizona Daily Star
Earth First! was founded in 1980 by a group of five friends, all of whom had extensive experience with established environmental organizations. Perhaps the closest charismatic figure that the movement had, Dave Foreman spent fifteen years of his life as a professional conservationist before co-founding Earth First! During the 1970’s he worked for The Wilderness Society as their Southwest Regional Representative and later as their chief lobbyist in Washington, DC. Howie Wolke and Bart Koehler, two other co-founders, had similar experiences before the formation of Earth First! They were Wyoming representatives for Friends of the Earth and The Wilderness Society. The fourth co-founder, Ron Kezar, was employed with the National Park Service. Fifth was Mike Roselle, former Yippie activist, and oil field worker, then direct-action coordinator for Greenpeace USA.
As a protest organization, Earth First! was very decentralized, with no stated leadership or organizational structure. Membership lists were not kept, and the only indicator of the organization’s size came from the about 15,000 subscriptions to the Earth First! Journal, edited by Dave Foreman. In the first issue of Earth First! Journal we learn that Earth First! was unlike other environmental organizations in that it specialized only in one area: public lands and their use. The primary concern of Earth First! was wilderness and the spectrum of public land uses which range from industrial agriculture to mining. Operating under the slogan “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!”, Earth First! wanted to achieve its goals of expanding wilderness areas and biodiversity using a number of different protest tactics. Between 1987 and 1990, Earth First! campaigns proliferated and amplified, and law enforcement authorities infiltrated the movement intensifying internal divisions.
In May 1989, Dave Foreman and four other Earth First! activists were arrested by the FBI and tried for conspiring to damage power lines near the Diablo Canyon and Palos Verde nuclear-generating stations. Eventually, the movement suffered from internal divisions and external repression and did not survive intact for long after the arrest of Foreman.
(Text adapted from the description of the finding aid.)
Earth First! Newsletter, March 1982
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Earth First! Newsletter, March 1982
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Card sent to Earth First! inquiring about the organization's goals and practices.
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Selection of correspondence to Earth First!
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Informational flier advertising the Institute for Social Ecology's 1988 Summer Semester. Murray Bookchin was involved with the leadership of the institute.
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 6
Informational flier advertising the Institute for Social Ecology's 1988 Summer Semester. Murray Bookchin was involved with the leadership of the institute.
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 6
Correspondence from social ecologist Murray Bookchin responding to critiques from Earth First!
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 6
Draft of a potential editorial sent to Earth First!
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Selection of correspondence to Earth First!
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Letter from Dave Foreman on Indigenous and Native Peoples and ecology.
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 9
Coverage in the Arizona Daily Star of the political rifts within Earth First! that eventually led to Dave Foreman leaving the organization.
Dave Foreman Earth First! Collection (MSS 1102 BC) Box 3, Folder 34
The links below will take you the finding aid for each collection. These finding aids are part of the New Mexico Archives Online (NMAO), a consortium of nineteen New Mexico repositories. Each finding aid includes information about the scope and extent of the collection, and a searchable table of contents.
The Lobo Outback Funeral Home by
The Lobo Outback Funeral Home is a novel about commitment -- or, rather, the consequences of shirking commitment. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman unfolds the story of burned-out and disillusioned Sierra Club lobbyist Jack Hunter, who leaves Washington, D. C., for his family's cabin in southwestern New Mexico's Diablo National Forest. Convinced there is nothing he or anyone else can do to stop humankind's war on nature, he returns to his old trade of horseshoeing, determined not to become involved again in conservation issues. Nevertheless, he finds himself falling for the leader of the Diablo Wilderness Committee, Dr. MaryAnne McClellan, a biologist who is as pretty as she is tough. She tries to draw him into the campaign to protect the Diablo Wilderness Area from Forest Service logging plans, and she also wants to involve him when a pack of lobos -- Mexican wolves -- are reintroduced to this wilderness bordering a small ranching community. Hunter refuses to commit to either MaryAnne or the lobos, however, and he is soon caught up in the bloody consequences of his cynicism, discovering the true cost of not taking a stand for what he loves.
The Great Conservation Divide by
Two conservation strategies--resourcism and Nature conservation--are the opposing sides of the Great Conservation Divide. Dave Foreman tells the story of the increasingly harsh and bitter fight between two warring conservation movements, vying over the fate of the last wild things in North America during the Twentieth Century. He lays out our hard choice between a Twenty-first Century world wholly dominated by Man or one where we not only save the last wild things, but also build upon growing rewilding efforts and networks.
The Big Outside by 
Rewilding North America by
In Rewilding North America, Dave Foreman takes on arguably the biggest ecological threat of our time: the global extinction crisis. He not only explains the problem in clear and powerful terms, but also offers a bold, hopeful, scientifically credible, and practically achievable solution. Foreman begins by setting out the specific evidence that a mass extinction is happening and analyzes how humans are causing it. Adapting Aldo Leopold's idea of ecological wounds, he details human impacts on species survival in seven categories, including direct killing, habitat loss and fragmentation, exotic species, and climate change. Foreman describes recent discoveries in conservation biology that call for wildlands networks instead of isolated protected areas, and, reviewing the history of protected areas, shows how wildlands networks are a logical next step for the conservation movement. The final section describes specific approaches for designing such networks (based on the work of the Wildlands Project, an organization Foreman helped to found) and offers concrete and workable reforms for establishing them. The author closes with an inspiring and empowering call to action for scientists and activists alike. Rewilding North America offers both a vision and a strategy for reconnecting, restoring, and rewilding the North American continent, and is an essential guidebook for anyone concerned with the future of life on earth.
Becoming Animal by
David Abram's first book, The Spell of the Sensuous--hailed as "revolutionary" by the Los Angeles Times, as "daring and truly original" by Science--has become a classic of environmental literature. Now Abram returns with a startling exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature. As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we've inured ourselves to the wild intelligence of our muscled flesh, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. This book subverts that distance, drawing readers ever deeper into their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the body and the breathing Earth. The shapeshifting of ravens, the erotic nature of gravity, the eloquence of thunder, the pleasures of being edible: all have their place in Abram's investigation. He shows that from the awakened perspective of the human animal, awareness (or mind) is not an exclusive possession of our species but a lucid quality of the biosphere itself--a quality in which we, along with the oaks and the spiders, steadily participate. With the audacity of its vision and the luminosity of its prose, Becoming Animal sets a new benchmark for the human appraisal of our place in the whole.
A Theory of General Ethics by
With A Theory of General Ethics Warwick Fox both defines the field of General Ethics and offers the first example of a truly general ethics. Specifically, he develops a single, integrated approach to ethics that encompasses the realms of interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment, and the ethics of the built environment. Thus Fox offers what is in effect the first example of an ethical "Theory of Everything."Fox refers to his own approach to General Ethics as the "theory of responsive cohesion." He argues that the best examples in any domain of interest--from psychology to politics, from conversations to theories--exemplify the quality of responsive cohesion, that is, they hold together by virtue of the mutual responsiveness of the elements that constitute them. Fox argues that the relational quality of responsive cohesion represents the most fundamental value there is. He then develops the theory of responsive cohesion, central features of which include the elaboration of a "theory of contexts" as well as a differentiated model of our obligations in respect of all beings. In doing this, he draws on cutting-edge work in cognitive science in order to develop a powerful distinction between beings that use language and beings that do not. Fox tests his theory against eighteen central problems in General Ethics--including challenges raised by abortion, euthanasia, personal obligations, politics, animal welfare, invasive species, ecological management, architecture, and planning--and shows that it offers sensible and defensible answers to the widest possible range of ethical problems.
Deep Ecology by
Deep Ecology explores the philosophical, psychological, and sociological roots of today's environmental movement, examines the human-centered assumptions behind most approaches to nature, explores the possibilities of an expanded human consciousness, and offers specific direct action suggestions for individuals to practice. Widely read in it first printing, Deep Ecology has established itself as one of the most significant books on environmental thought to appear in this decade. "Deep Ecology is subversive, but it's the kind of subversion we can use." --San Francisco Chronicle "This book is an attempt at codifying a scattered body of ecological insight into a philosophy that places human beings on an absolutely equal footing with all other creatures on the planet." --Stephanie Mills, Whole Earth Review "Difficult and (to some) unfamiliar insights on nature and human beings presented with simplicity and clarity, Deep Ecology rattles a cage full of occidental presumptions and yet it all seems almost like common sense." --Gary Snyder
The Philosophy of Social Ecology by
What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organisation, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.
Gathering Moss by
Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.
Bright Green Lies by 
Eco-Socialism by
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Reinhabiting Reality by
In this sequel to For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, also published by SUNY Press, Freya Mathews argues that replacing the materialist premise of modern civilization with a panpsychist one transforms the entire fabric of culture in profound ways. She claims that the environmental crisis is a symptom of deeper issues facing modern civilization arising from the loss of the very meaning of culture. To come to grips with this crisis requires a change in the metaphysical premise of modernity deeper than any as yet envisaged even by the radical ecology movement. This is a change with profound implications for the full range of existential questions and not merely for questions regarding our relationship with "nature."
