After hearing Riverwind and his colleagues talk about their work, most of which involves mind-numbing fund-raising, research, coalition-building, and legal wrangling, it becomes clear that one of the great ironies of Barry Clausen is that he's fighting a rearguard action against an enemy that has, in many cases, moved on to another battlefield. When sociologists talk about the rise and fall of crime rates, they sometimes use the concept of recidivists "aging out of crime" as they reach their midthirties. The same holds true for radical activists. At a certain point they're happy to let the kids storm the barricades while they apply themselves to more mature work. This doesn't wash with Clausen— once a monkeywrencher, always a monkeywrencher. Mitch Friedman published the infamous "Eco-Fucker Hit List" and now runs the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, which last year led a successful fight to preserve the Loomis Forest wilderness area along the U.S.-Canada border. He can't understand why Clausen doesn't champion reformed radicals such as himself. "You'd think he'd take people like me and make poster children out of us," says Friedman.

The hallway of the law school building is lined with literature tables set up by dozens of green groups. Save the wolf...drain Lake Powell...stop military overflights. It's an earthy-crunchy do-gooder's bazaar. At the Earth First! table I pick up a fresh copy of Earth First! Journal and make small talk with a young activist named Saxon, whose bred-in-Britain accent and ramshackle teeth make him a strong candidate for a role in an Oliver! revival. I ask him if he's heard of Barry Clausen.

"Clausen?" he says. "Aw, yeah. 'Ee's fairly infamous. A total joke."

We laugh, and I buy two of his T-shirts. One bears the Earth First! raised fist logo. The other says "Earth Liberation Front" and has an illustration of a bulldozer in the crosshairs. At which point Barry Clausen becomes something less than a total joke. He's claimed for years that Earth First! and ELF work together, wrench-in-fist; Earth First! denies any official connection. The proximity of two T-shirts on a table does not refute their claim—but tell me there ain't something fishy about that.

If you attend the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference with Clausen's theories swirling around in your head, it's easy to see how one so predisposed could conclude that the flames of ecoterrorism are fanned, wittingly or not, by mainstream activists. Despite the sweeping political change that American environmentalism has wrought in just 30 years, there remains a stubborn strain of bitterness among some of its most dedicated activists.

"Things keep going wrong," sighed David Brower, the movement's elder statesman, during the keynote address. "All I've done is slow the rate at which things get worse." One speaker at a forum on roadless areas began by ranting, "It's too late! It's too late to save roadless areas! It's too late to save biodiversity!" Among radical activists, this sense of desperation and hopelessness, combined with a fervent belief in the righteousness of their cause, leads to a climate in which compromise becomes synonymous with betrayal. Brower himself still carries the loss of Glen Canyon in the early 1960s—a dam to which he agreed so that two others would be stopped—like Jacob Marley's chains. It's a reductive trap: The only activist who can't be accused of selling out is the one who doesn't negotiate.

"This [young] generation of activists isn't going to waste 10 to 15 years working within the system," ALF activist Rod Coronado tells me later. I'd missed his speech at the conference—news reports said he was greeted with a standing ovation—so I called him up and asked why groups like ELF and ALF appealed to radical activists. "They've seen environmental laws sidestepped. With NAFTA and WTO, they're being shown that what people accomplished previously with the Endangered Species Act isn't working.... Direct action puts muscle behind the words of the environmental movement. When ELF targets an issue like the Canadian lynx, a statement is being made: If you cannot reach a solution, there are people who will operate outside legal channels."

Most mainstream environmental leaders, however, see underground actions as a pain in the ass. "We end up taking the rap for a lot of things they do," says Brock Evans, a former official in the Audubon Society, current head of the Endangered Species Coalition, and an activist since the 1960s. He has little patience for groups that claim their commitment to an issue with a single night of violence. "We've got groups working five, six years on the Canadian lynx," he says. "Nobody's heard a thing from the ELF on the issue before or since that fire." That said, you've got to give the devil his due. The fact is, one fire spread more awareness of lynx habitat than five years of legal work.

But firebombs and no compromise! slogans don't save habitats. "When we're fighting a battle, we get cards urging us to fight to the death," says Evans. "But those folks never come out and wrestle in the mud with us [in Washington, D.C.]. We're in a hundred-year war, and you don't take the capital city in one day. We fight as hard as hell for the best we can get, and move forward."

So you're willing to compromise, even if that means realizing only part of your goal? "You're damn right," Evans fires back. "I'll take a park the size of your desk if that's what I can get to start with. And I'll keep on fighting."