Eco-terrorism

Groups may conduct illegal activities, usually against property, but lives are also confronted and lost as a result of ecocide, hold sized?? technologies, habitat destruction, threats to biodiversity, justifications for war, and ironically some officially, sanctions fighting against illegal loggers and big-game wildlife poachers. Eco-terrorism is defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as "the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature." The FBI has credited to eco-terrorism 300 million dollars in property damage from 2003 and 2008, and a majority of states within the USA have introduced laws aimed at these activities. It is a neologism which has been used to describe threats and acts of violence, sabotage, vandalism, property damage and intimidation committed in the name of environmentalism. As a pejorative term, "eco-terrorism" has also been used to describe legally-protected forms of nonviolent protest by environmentalists, which is generally seen as an attempt to associate this activity with other more contentious acts that can legitimately be labeled as eco-terrorism.