Group of radical environmentalists facing long sentences as terrorists

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

By the time Chelsea Gerlach was 16, she was putting her passion for the environment into action.

She drove from Oregon to Idaho to protest a timber sale. She spoke at a university conference in Eugene alongside professors. Interviewed by her high school newspaper, she said, "Our generation was born to save the Earth."

Now Gerlach is 30, and although she may still be an environmentalist, a federal judge said Friday that she was a terrorist, too.

"It was your intention to scare, frighten and intimidate people and government through the very dangerous act of arson," Judge Ann Aiken told Gerlach at her sentencing in Eugene.

Aiken sentenced Gerlach to nine years in prison for her role in "the family," a group of at least 10 radical environmentalists who have been convicted of arson and other destructive actions at an electrical transmission tower; timber research centers; a Eugene police station; a ski resort in Vail, Colo.; and other sites in five Western states that they viewed as threats to the environment or their mission.

The defendants are connected to the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. The crimes occurred from 1996 to 2001, and the arrests were made in 2005 and early last year.

Now, after most of the defendants who were initially arrested have pleaded guilty, Aiken is sentencing them this week and next.

The cases have provided a window into conflicts in the radical environmental movement about strategy and loyalty. They have also highlighted a debate over what constitutes domestic terrorism at a time law enforcement and the military, as well as public attention, have focused on the terrorism faced on Sept. 11, 2001.

Defense lawyers had argued that the environmental cases were not terrorism because they did not take aim at people's lives.

"It was only intended to damage property," said Craig Weinerman, an assistant federal defender who represented Gerlach.

If you aren't for private property rights: you aren't for the environment.