Dangerous pro-choice extremists?

Of ELF, you said, "[T]hey have been known to commit arson when the owners of the properties are there, often at night."

ALF activist Donald Currie was jailed for 12 years and placed on probation for life in December 2006 after being found guilty of planting homemade bombs on the doorsteps of businessmen with links to Huntingdon Life Sciences.[36] When ALF activist David Blenkinsop and two others assaulted Huntingdon Life Sciences director Brian Cass with pick-axe handles in February 2001 ” an attack so serious that Detective Chief Inspector Tom Hobbs of Cambridgeshire police remarked: "It's only by sheer luck that we are not beginning a murder inquiry

In June 2006, the ALF claimed responsibility for a firebomb attack on UCLA researcher Lynn Fairbanks. The Animal Liberation Press Office issued a statement saying that Fairbanks was conducting "painful addiction experiments" on monkeys,[40] although Fairbanks herself said she studies primate behavior and does not do invasive research.[41] A firebomb was placed on the doorstep of a house occupied by Fairbanks' 70 year-old neighbor and a tenant; according to the FBI, the device was lit, and was powerful enough to have killed the occupants, but it failed to ignite.

In late 2006 a number of self-described ELF members pled guilty to arson and other charges in U.S. federal courts.[3]On November 11, 2006 Joyanna Zacher, Nathan Block, Daniel McGowan and Jonathan Paul pleaded guilty to several eco-sabotage related charges, as part of a global resolution agreement with prosecutors. Judge Ann Aiken presided over the hearings. The change of pleas from the four defendants resolves all current “Operation Backfire” cases in Oregon.[4]On December 15, 2006 Chelsea Dawn Gerlach and Stanilas Gregory Meyerhoff, pleaded guilty to $20 million worth of arsons committed between 1996 and 2001 by the Eugene-based cell of the ELF known as "The Family". Their fire-bombing of a Vail ski resort resulted in $12 million and the FBI characterized the ELF as the United States' "top domestic terrorism threat". Gerlach has previously pleaded guilty to 18 counts of arson, saying she was motivated by "a deep sense of despair and anger at the deteriorating state of the global environment," but adding that she has "since realized the firebombings did more harm than good." Meyerhoff has renounced ELF and pleaded guilty to 54 counts, but is still under indictment in Michigan, Arizona, Washington, Wyoming and California.[5]

It has also been claimed the ELF's actions harm the environment, a spokesman for the Vail Ski Resort, which the ELF fire bombed in 1998 in protest of a planned extension, explained, "more logs were used to rebuild the resort than were cut for the [original] expansion"... In 2001 the ELF targeted the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture in with the aim of disrupting research into genetic engineering. However, the targeted researcher was investigating hybridization in poplar trees, and the resulting fire killed a significant number of endangered plants

The original ELF disbanded in 1978 following Hanna's arrest for placing incendiary devices on seven crop-dusters at the Salinas, California airport on May Day, 1977... Several years later, the ELF acronym resurfaced, representing another eco-guerilla entity with similar philosophies, the Earth Liberation Front. There is no formal link between the two groups and John Hanna no longer advocates the tactics of either group, explaining, "We don't need more unibombers and idiots like my former ELF persona, running around trying to change the world by coercion and intimidation. That just doesn't get things done"