Mike Roselle | Tree Spiker, From Earth First! to Lowbagging

Two Missoula environmental activists have collaborated on an edgy tale of life on the precipice. Mike Roselle, one of the founders of Earth First!, the Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society, has been in the business of sabotaging environmental destruction for three decades.

He now publishes lowbagger.org, an online activist blog, with editor Josh Mahan, a graduate of The University of Montana’s journalism program, who helped write the book.

Roselle’s history with the environmental movement runs deep and wide: he’s been at the frontline of efforts to oppose nuclear tests, the destruction of old-growth forests and, most recently, mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia.

Although the title of the book, Tree Spiker, conjures the type of tactics rejected by mainstream environment groups, Roselle remains a staunch advocate of Gandhi’s brand of nonviolent civil disobedience. “Like all warfare, nonviolent civil disobedience requires training, discipline and sacrifice,” he writes. “In the end, it takes more courage to sit in front of a bulldozer than it does to… Read more