Save the Redwoods
Corporate logging has destroyed much of California’s once vast and majestic redwood forests. As environmental crises collide, the imperative to save the remaining trees is stronger than ever. That means challenging those who profit from the trees’ destruction.
Coastal redwood forests are the most effective carbon sinks on Earth. (Adam Nemeroff/Unsplash)
“Greasy Pete” (his tree-sitter name) went up the Mamma Tree on April 8, 2021; “Bugs” followed, climbing the next closest big tree on April 11. They climbed platforms 75 feet up the 200-foot-tall redwood trees, well-equipped to survive indefinitely.
The expectation was that there would be a confrontation on the morning of April 12 — the date set for the Anderson Logging Company of Fort Bragg to begin cutting. Several dozen supporters joined the tree sitters early that morning, prepared to form a human chain to cross the logging road and stop the trucks. It didn’t happen. This delay has provided some breathing space for Greasy and Bugs, but no one doubts that the confrontation is coming.
The tree sit is on the far western edge of the Jackson State Forest, 48,000 acres of publicly owned redwood forest in Mendocino County in Northern California. The sit is intended to stop the first of several timber harvest plans (THPs) now in the works for the forest, all of which will involve logging within two or three miles of the county’s famed coastline, not to mention its villages and coastal neighborhoods — Caspar on the coast is literally a stone’s throw away from this one.
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