It's not the falling.
It's that sudden stopping that always gets ya.
Tree-sitter dead after fall from tree in Corralitos
The Associated Press
Published 11:35 a.m. PDT Thursday, October 10, 2002
CORRALITOS, Calif.(AP) - A man with the environmental activist group Earth First!
has died after a 50-foot fall from a redwood tree in which he'd lived for several weeks.
Rescue personnel were called to the scene of a logging operation in the Ramsey Gulch
area about 20-miles south of San Jose on Tuesday night after loggers heard moans
coming from the area where a group of tree-sitters has been camped since August, the
group said. It was unclear how long the injured man had been on the ground.
It took workers a half-hour to hike to the scene. The man, who was believed to have a
broken arm and leg, was transported by helicopter to a San Jose hospital.
The Santa Clara County Coroner's Office confirmed Thursday morning the man was
dead, but said he had not been identified.
Earth First! said the man had been sitting on a platform in the tree for several weeks.
Apparently he had spent time in forests of Northern California, but the group said he
never had tree sat before.
Earth First! activists have protested logging operations by San Jose-based Redwood
Empire in the Ramsey Gulch area for more than two years. Although protesters and the
logging company have been at odds at times, Redwood Empire issued a statement
Wednesday saying its employees were saddened by the death.
Tree sitters can spend months camped on platforms in old-growth trees, hoping to call
attention to the environmental effects of logging. In perhaps the most famous incident,
Julia "Butterfly" Hill spent two years 180 feet up a 1,000-foot redwood in Northern
California to save it from being cut down for lumber.
She came down in 1999 after Pacific Lumber Co. agreed to leave the tree standing in
return for $50,000 to make up for lost logging revenue.
