Californian in Redwood to End Her Two-Year Protest
12/18/99
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Title: Californian in Redwood to End Her Two-Year Protest
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 18, 1999
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A woman who has lived atop a giant
California redwood tree for two years in a lonely protest against
logging will clamber to the ground Saturday for the first time since
December 1997 after reaching an agreement with Pacific Lumber Co.
Details of the agreement were not disclosed Friday. But Julia
"Butterfly" Hill's spokesman Paul Bassis said the deal provided
permanent protection for the giant redwood and a 200-foot buffer zone
around the tree located near Stafford, some 240 miles north of San
Francisco.
"The agreement is signed, the ink is dry and it is finalized," Bassis
said in a telephone interview.
Hopes for a resolution were sparked some 10 days ago when a local
newspaper reported that Hill and Pacific Lumber were in negotiations
to end the standoff, which has received media attention around the
world.
Hill is expected to descend from her bed-sized perch 180 feet above
the ground for a Saturday news conference, Bassis said. "She will be
there on the ground in person," he said.
Since she began her "tree-sit" Dec. 10, 1997, the 25-year-old Hill
has braved El Nino storms and the taunts of lumberjacks while living
on a 6-by-8-foot platform atop a tree she has named Luna.
LONG LINE OF BATTLES
Communicating with journalists by cell phone, taking sponge baths and
subsisting on provisions hoisted aloft by supporters, Hill has
attracted widespread attention in the latest of a long line of
battles over the last few old-growth groves of redwoods.
Pacific Lumber officials confirmed there was an agreement but said
the company, a division of Houston-based MAXXAM Inc. , would provide
details Saturday.
"There is an agreement with Ms. Hill, and we are not going to be
making any further statement at this point," Josh Reiss, a spokesman
for Pacific Lumber, said in a telephone interview.
But it is expected that the environmental protester and her
supporters will pay $50,000 to Pacific Lumber in return for a logging
ban at the site.
That money, which could come from public donations, T-shirt sales and
a book deal that Hill has reached, would be donated to Humboldt State
University for forestry research.
The company had also sought assurances that Hill would not encourage
others to embark on tree-sits as forms of protest, but it was not
clear if this was part of the agreement.
Last March MAXXAM agreed to sell for $450 million several thousand
acres of redwoods in northern California. Under the Headwaters
Agreement, the state of California and the federal government paid to
buy 7,500 acres of the Headwaters Forest, the largest privately owned
stand of virgin redwoods, and other, smaller groves nearby.
But Luna and the grove in which it sits were not included in that
agreement, prompting Hill to remain high in her tree.