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Nearly a week has passed, and the man calling himself Traveler remains perched high up in a cedar tree at Park Street and Eighth Avenue downtown. He took up residence in the tree on Saturday and remained up there late Thursday. His friends and supporters bring food and supplies that he hoists upward with rope, and they take away waste that he lowers in a bucket. Traveler says he won't come down until the city repeals its camping ban and creates a legal campsite for Eugene's many homeless. But business owners have started to complain about Traveler and about his...

Forest defenders in southern Oregon have taken the struggle to save Peak to the next level. People are now occupying treesits to make a stand for some of the last remaining native forests in Oregon. The Mazama Forest Defenders take action to resist the Peak timber sale, the replacement volume program, and the continued destruction of our last native forests. Activists are occupying tree-sits in the Peak timber sale to resist the imminent logging of this ecologically important native forest. The construction of platforms high in the canopy of trees marked for cutting follows a multi-faceted grassroots campaign to end...

U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers have blocked resupplies of food and water to a woman who climbed a tree in the Willamette National Forest to protest old growth logging. Officers intend to arrest the woman when she comes down and charge her with interfering with an agricultural operation, a Class A misdemeanor under state law, District Ranger Rick Scott said Monday. "It's up to her to decide when she wants to come down," Scott said. The woman, who goes by "Basil," has spent the past two weeks on a platform suspended about 70 feet up a large Douglas fir....

Forest Defenders take to the trees at Blodgett Timber Sale in Cottage Grove Cottage Grove, OR -- Under cover of darkness last night, several members of the Cottage Grove community, along with support from the Cascadia Forest Defenders (CFD) of Eugene, constructed a tree-sit at the Blodgett timber sale. Blodgett is located in the Brice Creek Watershed of the Cottage Grove Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest. This area has been mired in controversy over the past two years. Local citizens have tried to make their concerns known to the Forest Service, but the response has been increased law...

    Remembering June 1stCould the pepper spraying and tree cutting happen again?By Alan PittmanFive years ago, the city of Eugene was in such a rush to start building the Broadway Place project that they roasted tree sitter Jim Flynn alive, dousing him with can after can of pepper spray while he dangled 40 feet up in a tree. Early on a Sunday morning, police in a fire truck rescue bucket cut Flynn's pants to his crotch to expose more flesh, allowing the spray to burn his genitals and anus. Officers punched Flynn in the arms and ribs over...

Activists jarred but not beaten by sitter's death By The Associated Press   Recommend this story to others.   PORTLAND - A week after Beth O'Brien fell 150 feet to her death from a tree-sitting platform, activists protesting a federal timber sale are conflicted. Some said her death - which happened the same week the U.S. Forest Service canceled the controversial Eagle Creek timber sale - makes them more committed than ever to stopping logging on public land. Others voiced anger that protesters must risk their lives to change federal forest policy. And most said cancellation of the timber sale...