The Daily Populous Friday November 15th, 2024 morning edition
Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by Pitouyou

Pitouyou on November 14th, 2024 at 21:57 UTC »

She named the 1500-year-old tree Luna. She came down after making an agreement with the lumber company to spare the tree. It’s still there.

normalbot9999 on November 14th, 2024 at 23:46 UTC »

This woman knows how to tree. Proper badass. On the other hand I'm a bit jealous - I bet it was amazing at times.

Hill lived on two 6-by-4-foot (1.8 by 1.2 m) platforms for 738 days. She learned many survival skills while living in Luna, such as "seldom washing the soles of her feet, because the sap helped her feet stick to the branches better." She used solar-powered cell phones for radio interviews, became an "in-tree" correspondent for a cable television show, and hosted TV crews to protest old-growth clear cutting. Using ropes, Hill hoisted up survival supplies brought by an eight-member support crew. To keep warm, she wrapped herself tight in a sleeping bag, leaving only a small hole for breathing. For meals, she used a single-burner propane stove. Throughout her ordeal, she weathered freezing rains and 40 mph (64 km/h) winds from El Niño, helicopter harassment, a ten-day siege by company security guards and attempts at intimidation by angry loggers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Butterfly_Hill

letsburn00 on November 15th, 2024 at 00:45 UTC »

This whole situation is really interesting because what she was actually fighting was corporate incompetence. Until the 80s, the lumber company was extremely profitable and had a long term plan. Basically cut at the rate of regrowth and plant as you cut. They would produce lumber from zones and have decades long plans so they didn't over harvest.

In the mid 80s, a hostile takeover bought the company, which put huge debts on the company that previously had no debts. They ended up massively increasing the rate of felling. The huge fights this woman was involved in was painted as "hippies stop normal and required lumber industry." But in reality it was a company that was harvesting at such a rate that they would run out of wood and destroy all the habitats nearby. Eventually they ended up bombing one of the activists, claiming she had bombed herself by accident.

Eventually, the exact thing people warned them of happened. The company went bankrupt in the 2007 because they had felled all the available timber.

Edit:The wiki page for the lumber company Pacific Lumber is quite detailed. Since the company is now defunct, there hasn't been anyone paying wiki whitewashing companies, so it's a fairly accurate summary.