Tree Sitter Dies In Platform Fall

AP via Newsday ^ | April 13,2002 | Andrew Kramer

[John W]

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A tree sitter in the Mount Hood National Forest died after falling 150 feet from a tree she was trying to protect from logging.

In a sad twist, the sale of timber the woman was protesting had been canceled three days before her death on Friday.

Local rescue crews struggled up snow-clogged dirt roads to reach the tree sitters' camp in the Eagle Creek wilderness area, east of Portland, after a fellow activist called 9-1-1 on a cell phone at about 7 p.m., Clackamas County Sheriff's spokeswoman Angela Blanchard said.

[chainsaw]

A Darwin candidate?

[Bush2000]

"Activists protested burying the woman's body in a cemetery since it was a waste of precious environmental resources..." /sarcasm

[AppyPappy]

Hopefully, she'll be composted.

I think it is awful you are making light of this woman's death.

[Movemout]

One should mourn the passing of this Red Headed Woodpecker, an environmentally protected species. Her contribution to society, i.e. falling out of the tree, is greatly appreciated.

[WilliamWallace1999]

If a flake falls from a tree alone in the forest, does it make a sound?

[JZoback]

The Forest Service and the timber company Vanport Manufacturing

Get ready for a nasty lawsuit

Of course it's your fault. You made her sit in a tree on a wooden platform 150 feet in the air.< / sarcasm >

Gravity is a real pain in the you know what.

[Bush2000]

I think it is awful you are making light of this woman's death.

Light? Nah. Gravity works.

[AmericaUnited]

"Hey, tree happens..."

[Former Proud Canadian]

Gravity does work. Darwin was right too.

[kcvl]

[lysol@whitehouse]

I respect and honor the 'tree sitter' who died while following her conscience. It is easy to carp, but it takes character to put yourself on the line.

[capt. norm]

Seeing that guitar picker in one of your pics made me wonder how many choruses of "Kumbaya" they sang during the three years.

[JMK]

Tree sitters live in plywood platforms attached to the upper limbs of trees slated for logging.

How many trees die to make their platforms?

[Khepera]

natural selection?

[boris]

There IS a God...and He has a sense of humor.

[ken5050]

Any guesses on what the tox screen will show when they do the autopsy?.....

[Tijeras_Slim]

In picture #4, what are they doing? Practicing TLF's? (Tree Landing Falls)

[boris]

Bad engineering. Plus, is that plastic I see forming the "roof" of the platform?...Evil plastic, spawn of evil chemical corporations?...

No wonder it fell down.

--Boris

[Junior]

She might have made it had someone been able to build a logging road into the region. "Hoist by her own petard ..."