Operation Bite Back

Rod Coronado's War to Save American Wilderness

By Dean Kuipers

As the environmental movement gains followers and momentum, Dean Kuipers gives us an insider look at its radical wing and its uneasy relationship with the mainstream.

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.

Reviews for Operation Bite Back

“If the book did nothing but recount Coronado's string of arson attacks, it would be highly entertaining, as good as any first-rate adventure story. But Kuipers goes further, using Coronado's story to trace the history of the radical environmental movement and explore the divisions--philosophical and tactical--that various forms of direct action have caused among eco-activists.”— Earth Island Journal.

“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…Perhaps the most compelling aspect of “Operation Bite Back” is its analysis of the way various laws – including the Patriot Act – have been employed, with encouragement from natural resource extraction industries, to target individuals as enemies of the state who previously had been treated as criminal mischief makers.”—Christian Science Monitor. Read full review.

“Important, fascinating…a significant chronicle of our time.”—Los Angeles Times. Read full review.

Recent radio interviews...

OPERATION BITE BACK author Dean Kuipers did a live, hour-long interview with Jefferson Public Radio (NPR in Ashland, OR) on Monday, July 13th. Then, he did a live 20 minute segment on KPFA’s “Flashpoints” on July 14th in Oakland. Dean Kuipers taped an interview with KFOG-FM “The KFOG Morning Show” on Tuesday, July 14th. He’ll also was on KPFK-FM’s “Deadline LA” on July 17th.

Recent blog action...

A great Q&A with OPERATION BITE BACK author Dean Kuipers on grist.org And picked up on this blog too HelpingAnimalsWorldwide.

“Fast and furious…"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.”—Portland Oregonian. Read full review.

Operation Bite Back appears on LA Observed. LA Observed is an award-winning website devoted to independent reporting, informed commentary and selective linkage on the Los Angeles region and the news media and is read daily by an elite audience of journalists, executives, government officials, politicians, authors, bloggers and others interested in the public life of Los Angeles.

"Passions run high when it comes to environmentalism, yet few condone the extreme tactics of such groups as the Animal Liberation Front. Los Angeles Times editor Kuipers, author of the counterculture saga Burning Rainbow Farm (2006), focuses on ecowarrior, some would say ecoterrorist, Ron Coronado as a key to the incendiary side of green activism. A Californian of Yaqui descent, Coronado began demonstrating in support of animal rights while still in grade school. He joined Sea Shepherd, a direc taction anti-whaling group, instead of going to college, thus launching a life of illegal protest that turned him into a saboteur, arsonist, and fugitive; landed him in jail; and embroiled him in an infamous legal case that fuses freedom-of-speech issues with ramped-up domestic-terrorist laws. 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.—Donna Seamans, Booklist

Here's a great Q&A with Operation Bite Back author Dean Kuipers on Counterpunch.org.

“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 communiqué 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 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 Reviews, starred review

"Veteran journalist Kuipers’s (Burning Rainbow Farm) fascinating account of animal rights activist Rod Coronado follows the charismatic Coronado from his introduction to animal protection in the 1980s to his campaign of sabotage against the fur industry, his life in the underground and on reservations among fellow Native Americans, and ultimately his arrests and incarcerations. Coronado’s story illustrates the shifting political environment of the past two decades, in which industries and activists have faced off over environmental issues and laws have increasingly branded activists as domestic terrorists.

Verdict 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."—Leslie J. Patterson, Library Journal