By David Benac, Ph.D.
Rainforest Radicals presents the first history of one of the most innovative and successful environmental organizations of the late twentieth century. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) emerged in 1985, when it took over a fledgling effort to protect rainforests from transnational corporations funding the expansion of tropical cattle ranching. It excelled at using nonviolent, civil disobedience in dramatic campaigns that captured the attention of the public, media, and RAN’s corporate adversaries. As a result, two decades later rainforest conservation went from a niche academic topic to a fixture in American popular culture, the rights of Indigenous people had gone from ignored or romanticized to at least considered in discussions of the management of their ancestral homelands, and RAN had scored a series of victories over some of the planet’s largest corporations.
David Benac is an environmental and public historian of the post-WWII United States. His research investigates grassroots environmental action, popular perceptions of nature, the science of ecology, and the philosophy of ecocentrism. Rainforest Radicals: A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) explores the radical environmental movement of the late twentieth century and international coalitions of grassroots groups devoted to supporting indigenous rights and environmental protections. Dr. Benac also works as a consulting historian, writing land-use histories for land-management entities.
