Tree-Sitters Are Down but Not Out
FRESHWATER, Calif. — After weeks of bitter confrontation, Pacific Lumber Co. has evicted most of the anti-logging tree-sitters from the redwoods here and declared at least a partial victory over the protesters who have hampered its logging operations.
"We've either been successful in removing individuals or removing their platforms and gear," said Pacific Lumber spokesman Jim Branham. "I think, overall, the effort's been a success to date. The effect of the tree-sitters on the logging operations is [now] minimal."
This week, helicopters droned over the picturesque landscape, hauling logs down the steep slopes of the Freshwater watershed, located just off a winding two-lane road a few miles from Eureka. A handful of protesters remain in the trees and the company will remove them as necessary, Branham said.
Meanwhile, tree-sitters decried the massive logging operation now taking place and vowed not to give up.
"It's definitely not over," said Jeny Card, 28, an anti-logging activist who calls herself Remedy.
Backers of the tree-sitters held a candlelight vigil last month to honor the activists and mourn "the magnificent forest just lost to the destructiveness."
Card, a former bookstore worker in Olympia, Wash., spent nearly a year 130 feet up in an ancient redwood she named "Jerry," for the late Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia. She was forced down in March and charged with trespassing and violating a court order.
She was one of about 30 tree-sitters and their supporters arrested since mid-March when company-hired climbers began forcing them down, according to the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department.
The vast majority of the arrests were for trespassing, but a few were more serious. One man was charged with brandishing a knife at loggers, one with vandalizing logging equipment, and another with felonious assault for allegedly tampering with the safety lines and harness of a climber attempting to remove a tree-sitter.
Card said the "forest defenders," as they call themselves, may turn their attention this summer to the Mattole watershed, another Humboldt County area slated for logging by Pacific Lumber. Several tree-sitters are already there.
Until she and others took up residence in the trees, Card said, little attention was paid to forest activism in the Freshwater area. Now the subject of logging is "in the paper every day. The community's whipped up about it, people are talking about it, they're impassioned," she said. "It's awesome that these really important issues are on the table."
