Monday, November 24, 2008

Tree-sitters: Remote sits prove to be less effective Where have all the tree-sitters gone? The acts of civil disobedience that were such a publicized part of the Northwest "timber wars" of the 1980s and '90s have tapered off. There are still tree sits every now and then, but they are not as frequent as they were. It's been six years, in fact, since a group made front-page news when they camped 30 miles from Portland in the Mount Hood National Forest to protest the Eagle Creek timber sale. The U.S. Forest Service eventually canceled the disputed logging contract, but not because of the protest, and one of the sitters, a 22-year-old woman, fell 150 feet from a tree perch soon after the cancellation and died. If a recent event in Salem is any indication, tree-sitting might be staging a comeback, albeit in a form tweaked to address a new mind-set and a never-ending news cycle. Who sits in a tree these days, and why do it?....

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