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四、生态环境恐怖主义 Islamic terrorism may be a distant threat for Shearer Lumber Products, a timber company based in Idaho. But eco-terrorism is a very real one. In November, the Earth Liberation Front , an underground organization, gave warning that it hadspikedtrees in the Nez Perce national forest to protest against logging. Spiking involves hiding metal bars in tree trunks, thereby potentially crippling chain saws and hurting people. More such attacks are expected. How do they fit into Americas war on terrorism? The nations forests have seen a sharp increase in violent incidentsequipment vandalized, people intimidatedover the past ten years. Shearer now carefully inspects every tree before cutting and has been using metal detectors to check every trunk being processed. Yet Ihor Mereszczak, of the Nez Perce Forest Service, says it has been hard to get the FBIs attention, and investigations have got nowhere. The ELF is only one thread in a web of underground radical environmentalists. Its aim is to inflict as much financial pain as possible on organizations or people who, by its lights, are exploiting the environment. The ELF, though made up of anonymous cells, nonetheless operates a website offering tips on how to cause fires with electric timers. Until recently, it also had a public spokesman. Together with the Animal Liberation Front , which operates along the same lines, the ELF is estimated to be responsible for over $45m-worth of damage in North America over the past few years. In 1998, it caused fires that did $12m-worth of damage in Vail, Colorado, to make the point that the ski resorts expansion was threatening places where lynxes live. Earlier this year, the ELF burned down the offices of a lumber company in Oregon. Since September 11th, the ALF and ELF have claimed responsibility for starting a fire at a primate research center in New Mexico, releasing mink from an Iowa fur farm, and firebombing a federal corral for wild horses in California. | 
