EF originally mixed innovative publicity, such as rolling a plastic "crack" down Glen Canyon Dam, with far-reaching wilderness proposals that went far beyond what the mainstream environmental groups were willing to advocate, and with conservation biology research from a biocentric perspective.
In 1989 Foreman was implicated in the FBI conspiracy known as THERMCON wherein four activists in Prescott, Arizona, who were only peripherally connected with EF, were enticed by undercover FBI agent Michael Fain (alias Mike Tait) who talked them into the destruction of a power line in the State of Arizona.
[2] In the book he expressed his view that Earth First!, by 1990, had largely run its course, and was starting to attract new members who took the group in a more countercultural and left-wing direction than he was comfortable associating with.
funds were diverted to launch a punk-style zine called "Live Wild or Die", which among other things espoused anarchism and attacked Foreman's and Abbey's views on some controversial issues then being debated within EF.
While Foreman and most of the rest of the old guard of EF severed their ties to the group in 1990, he remains an environmental activist.