Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado's War to Save American Wilderness

by Dean Kuipers

Overview

Dean Kuipers takes us behind the scenes of the Animal Liberation Front and its punk-anarchist sibling the Earth Liberation Front, two of the most notorious and violent environmental groups and one of the FBI's biggest domestic terrorist priorities--even in the wake of 9/11. Kuipers tells us the story of ALF and ELF through Rod Coronado, an eco-terrorist and animal rights activist who has served jail time on several convictions in connection with his radical activities. From his teenage association with the Sea Shepherd and Earth First! through the federal manhunt that transformed him into a folk hero, Coronado's story parallels a movement that has led to over 1,200 acts of sabotage, $1 billion in damages, and a legal showdown that will define America's relationship to environmentalism. Neither a biography nor a polemic about animal rights, Operation Bite Back tells the outlaw tale of a man who acted on well-defined principles to carry out a campaign of political sabotage, putting his life on the line for an environmental movement that ultimately couldn't afford to be identified with his extreme actions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608191420
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Dean Kuipers is the managing editor of the Los Angles Times entertainment site. He was deputy editor of Los Angeles City Beat and the author of Burning Rainbow Farm, I Am a Bullet, and Ray Gun Out of Control. He lives in Los Angeles.
Dean Kuipers is the managing editor of the Los Angles Times entertainment site. He was deputy editor of Los Angeles City Beat and the author of Burning Rainbow Farm, I Am a Bullet, and Ray Gun Out of Control. He lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

Kuipers (Burning Rainbow Farm) reports on "eco-tage" or eco-sabotage, groups via the story of Rob Coronado, one of the movement's most active members. After an early victory sinking whaling ships in Iceland, Coronado mounted a series of "actions" over the years, breaking into fur farms and animal-testing laboratories, destroying cages and research documents, and often committing arson. The book provides an exhaustive account of Rod's path through the fringe environmental movement, his evolving political philosophy and his deepening identification with his Yaqui ancestral beliefs, which embrace the environment as an integral element of human life. Simultaneously, it traces how Coronado became "isolated and paranoid" as the FBI intensified its manhunt and eventually arrested the man they characterized as a terrorist. Kuipers's fascination for his subject veers dangerously close to awe at times, but he is generally fair in his depiction of the moral ambiguities at the heart of "eco-tage" and presents the voices of people negatively affected by Coronado. Anyone interested in the extreme edges of the environmental movement will be well served by this account, which throws a light on its often misunderstood philosophy. (June)

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Publishers Weekly

Los Angeles Times editor Kuipers (Burning Rainbow Farm, 2006, etc.) delivers a searing narrative on the fringe animal-activist movement. Part deep ecologist, part native spiritualist, part renegade, Rod Coronado found his calling as an activist-saboteur while taking part as a teenager in the much-publicized sinking of two whaling ships in Reykjavik, Iceland. Over the next decade, he would narrow his focus to saving animals bred to slaughter for their fur, targeting hundreds of fur farms and affiliated university labs across the country. In a suspenseful scene that reads like an episode from a mystery novel, the author details how Coronado and his accomplices pulled off a multifaceted raid at Washington State University, where they freed coyotes and mink and destroyed laboratory files. The communique he faxed to the Associated Press the following day read, "No industry or individual is safe from the rising tide of fur animal liberation." With this public, thinly veiled threat, Coronado brought an activist identity to maturity. Suddenly his vehemently nonviolent-though often destructive-trail of sabotage was labeled "terrorism," and the entire movement was forced to account for his actions, enduring raids by Feds and ire from the fur and medical communities. By 2006, so many activists had been handed harsh sentences for acts of eco-terrorism under the broad prosecutorial reach of the Patriot Act that the animal-rights community dubbed it the "Green Scare." "Their opponents controlled the conversation by controlling the definition of nonviolence," writes Kuipers, making a salient point with deep implications in an era of diluted individual rights. Despite his decades of experience coveringthe radical environmental movement, the author is careful to remain an objective narrator, presenting much contextual detail and allowing Coronado and his peers' brimming passion to tell the story. A provocative and careful testament to the ever-changing definition of activism. Local author events in Southern California

Kirkus Reviews

[A] fast and furious trip into the underground of North America's environmental and animal-rights wars... Operation Bite Back is a bracing corrective to the official story, and a fascinating look at the crosscurrents of power, belief, extremism, liberty and opposing views of virtue.” —Oregonian

“Kuipers delivers a searing narrative on the fringe animal-activist movement. Despite his decades of experience covering the radical environmental movement, the author is careful to remain an objective narrator, presenting much contextual detail and allowing Coronado and his peers' brimming passion to tell the story. A provocative and careful testament to the ever-changing definition of activism.” —Kirkus, starred review

“Coronado's outlaw adventures for the cause are electrifying, from his covert videotaping of crimes against animals to his fiery destruction of fur farms and research labs, and his spiritual and moral struggles are equally compelling and genuinely instructive. As Kuipers meticulously tracks Coronado's intense commitment to animals and eventual rejection of violence, he illuminates the tenets of deep ecology and animal rights and provides an invaluable history of radical environmentalism, a force that may gain momentum as mainstream society fails to respond to looming crises.” —Booklist, starred review

“Regardless of how one views Coronado's deeds or crimes, his legend remains intact and it is this rich terrain – as fascinating as it is disturbing – that journalist Dean Kuipers traverses in his new book... In many ways, this book is a breakthrough, for it offers a glimpse into the workings of the ALF and what Kuipers calls "its punk-anarchist sibling," the ELF. The narrative is certainly provocative in this post-9/11 era when society and law enforcement officials have arrived at a different definition of what constitutes domestic terror.” —Christian Science Monitor

“It has the drama of an adventure story, but Kuipers's tale about the Animal Liberation Front is deadly serious and has serious implications for both animal and human rights. An important book that will appeal to readers interested in environmental and social issues.” —Library Journal

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