They haven't thought about the consequences for the environment or the animals. The actions at Vail were very effective at gaining public attention, but activists have been taking direct action along similar lines for more than 100 years. An animal-testing lecture at Britain's University of Norwich turned into a student protest in 1876 and led to the passage of the Cruelty to Animals Act. But actions have escalated in the last 20 years. Opinions on direct environmental action vary.
Defenders say the activists are brave crusaders for the planet's well-being.
But Dr. Greg Nelson, a spokesman for the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, is not so sanguine. They should be locked up and then made to repay society for all of the costs. Nelson's comments followed a laboratory attack by the ALF in 1999 that, he says, robbed a brain cancer patient of a last-chance remedy, and set back research into brain tumors, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. Direct action partisans say that crimes against property need to be taken in perspective. Yet the annihilation of a whole eco-system is called progress and development.