David Foreman

David Foreman
Born	(1946-10-18)October 18, 1946 Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Died	Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Other names	Dave Foreman
Education	San Antonio Junior College, University of New Mexico
Known for	Activism, writing
Movement	Radical environmentalism, nativism
Spouse(s)	Debbie Sease (m. 1976) Nancy Morton (m. 1986; d. 2021)

William David Foreman (October 18, 1946 – September 19, 2022) was an American environmentalist and author, he was a co-founder of Earth First! and a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement.

Biography

David Foreman was born on October 18, 1946 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His father was a United States Air Force sergeant. Foreman attended San Antonio Junior College and University of New Mexico, where he majored in history. In his early life he was active in conservative politics, campaigning for Barry Goldwater and forming the Young Americans for Freedom conservative youth chapter on his junior college campus. In 1968, Foreman joined the U.S. Marine Corps' Marine Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia and received an undesirable discharge after 61 days.

After his experience with the Marine Corps, he worked as a teacher at a Zuni Indian reservation in New Mexico and would shoe horses. Foreman died in Albuquerque on September 19, 2022 from interstitial lung disease at the age of 75.

Activism and environmentalist work

The Wilderness Society

Between 1973 and 1980, he worked for The Wilderness Society as Southwest Regional Representative in New Mexico and the Director of Wilderness Affairs in Washington, DC.

By the late 1970s, Foreman had become increasingly disillusioned by what he viewed as the “professionalization” of the environmental movement. After the United States Forest Service's Roadless Area Review and Evaluation II resulted in the opening of thirty-six million acres (146,000 km²) of land for logging in 1979, Foreman left Washington and abandoned his job as an environmental lobbyist.

Earth First!

Main article: Earth First!

In April 1980, Foreman and friends Howie Wolke, Ron Kezar, Bart Koehler, and Mike Roselle took a week-long hiking trip in the Pinacate Desert. It was during this trip that Foreman is believed to have coined the phrase "Earth First!" The movement that subsequently bore that name was inspired, in some part, by the writings of Edward Abbey, author of the novel The Monkeywrench Gang. In contrast with the cautious lobbying efforts of the established environmental organizations, "monkeywrenching"—industrial sabotage traditionally associated with labor struggles—would become the chief tactic of the Earth First! movement in the 1980s. The Earth First! Journal, which Foreman edited from 1982 to 1988, featured lively debates on the ethics and effectiveness of this controversial tactic.

In 1990, Foreman was one of five people arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following operation THERMCON, in which FBI agents infiltrated an Arizona Earth First! group, encouraging them to sabotage a powerline feeding a water pumping station. While Foreman had no direct role in the attempted sabotage, he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy. He was permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for handing two copies of Ecodefense to an FBI informant, and received a suspended sentence.

After less than a decade, Foreman left Earth First!, disillusioned by the changing character of the organization. According to Foreman, the incorporation of Marxists and anarchists into Earth First! changed the movement, and not for the better. Foreman went on to form the Rewilding Institute.

Other

From 1976 to 1980, he was a board member for the New Mexico chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

Foreman co-founded the Wildlands Network in 1991, which aims to establish a network of protected wilderness areas across North America.

From 1995 to 1997, he served on the Sierra Club’s board of directors, but departed after the organization rejected his proposed policy on restrictive immigration.

In 1997, Foreman co-founded the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. In 2003, Foreman and the board of directors of the Wildlands Project founded a new think tank, the Rewilding Institute, dedicated to "the development and promotion of ideas and strategies to advance continental-scale conservation in North America and to combat the extinction crisis."

Writing

In 1985, Foreman published the first edition of the book Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, sharing the editing credits with one “Bill Haywood”. Ecodefense collected articles published in Earth First! Journal’s “Dear Nedd Ludd” column, which provided advice to would-be monkeywrenchers on sabotage techniques.

Foreman is the author of The Lobo Outback Funeral Home, a novel, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, a collection of essays, and Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century. He also co-authored The Big Outside with Howie Wolke. Most recently, he authored Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife, which argues that human overpopulation is the primary cause of biodiversity loss and other environmental problems.

Controversy

In a 1986 interview, Foreman said the United States should not be providing aid for the Ethiopia famine and hunger crisis, but rather, “let nature seek its own balance." He later clarified his position, stating, "I have serious doubts and nagging questions about conventional “humanitarian” foreign aid responses to the increasing problem of famine in the Third World. That is what I was trying to get at in my comments on famine in Ethiopia. In my oft-quoted remark about famine in Ethiopia, however, I failed to clearly make this point. Indeed, I implied through my sloppy, off-the-cuff remark that famine was purely a biological question of too many people and too few resources, completely unrelated to social organization, economic exploitation, or international relations. I also implied that the best possible social response was for us to do nothing, offer no assistance of any kind, and to just let the hungry starve. I very much regret the way I phrased these comments. Standing by themselves, out of context, they sound truly cold hearted."

Foreman was criticized for his anti-immigration statements, such as when he said, “letting the USA be an overflow valve for problems in Latin America is not solving a thing. It’s just putting more pressure on the resources we have in the USA." He later sought to clarify his statements by saying, "While I still believe that massive and unlimited immigration into any country is a serious problem, I do not support beefing up the Border Patrol and the other agencies that try to keep Latin Americans out of this country. I do not think that this is a realistic or ethical response to the underlying problem." He went on to say, "While I agree that the population question can be approached in narrow, racist, and fascistic ways, I strenuously reject the idea that any and all ecologically-grounded concerns about human overpopulation are racist and fascist. Is it racist and fascist, for example, to propose making birth control methods and devices, including the French abortion pill and sterilization, freely available to any woman or man in the world who desires them?"

Some of the goals of the Wildlands Network have been characterized as "lofty scientific ideals" since it could take 100 years to realize some outcomes. Its founders, including Foreman, replied that they "did not want to compete with existing conservation groups. They wanted to create a framework those groups could work within and a clearinghouse for information and science."

External links

• David Foreman at the Internet Movie Database
• Dave Foreman: A Dialogue with Derrick Jensen