Extremism and terrorism in the name of animal rights are phenomena predominantly present in Western democracies such as the United States of America and UK. In the past twenty years extremist and terrorist groups fighting for environmental and animal rights protection have caused, only in America, material damage at the amount of over 100 million dollars. In addition, they are responsible for arsons, bomb attacks, vandalism, harassment, kidnappings and many other forms of violence.
These new forms of extremism and terrorism were created in the `70s of the 20th century with the goal to protect animal rights. In order to understand their ideology and methodology of work it is necessary to make a distinction between the two related phenomena - animal welfare and animal rights. While proponents of animal welfare concept believe that people have to treat animals humanely, opposing any form of abuse, the idea of animal rights which nowadays forms a particular philosophic system, is actually against any kind of animal exploitation by humans. It is exactly in this idea that we find a seed of possible extremism in the name of animal rights protection. Behavior of activists who strive for radical realization of animal rights often turns into those forms of behavior we can qualify not only as extremism, but also terrorism.