Seeds of Rebellion

Abstract

The Redwood Wars were largely defined by dramatic confrontations between activists and timber companies in the woods, in the courts, and in the legislature. The iconic images of those late twentieth-century conflicts include Julia “Butterfly” Hill standing atop the giant redwood she named Luna, and other tree sitters hanging large banners from their perches across the North Coast. Some Americans might conjure images of Charles Hurwitz and junk bond dealer Michael Milken, or of the bombed-out car of Judi Bari. Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County became the center of the Redwood Wars. By the end of the 1980s, most of the popular imagery had emerged from the battles over the fate of that forest. However, the seeds of those tumultuous years were planted during the late 1970s and early 1980s at a less well-known location in southern Humboldt County. At Sally Bell Grove, near the Sinkyone Wilderness and the Lost Coast, local activists embarked on a campaign to resist the ever-expanding industrial logging of multinational logging companies, and protect old-growth redwood groves. To fight industrial liquidation logging, activists commingled direct action, public protest, public comment, and citizen participation provisions for forestry regulation, litigation, and lobbying in ways that drove timber companies mad and compelled reform by the California Department of Forestry (CDF). Organizations and partnerships were formed during the fight over Sally Bell. Legal expertise and “tree-hugging” tactics were honed and coordinated in the courtrooms and the woods. And activists fashioned a style and tone of activism suited to their values and demands. Those tools, tactics, and strategies were repeated over and over again from 1985 through at least the end of the twentieth century. Thus, when Julia “Butterfly” Hill and the scores of other activists perched in trees and filed lawsuits, they operated from a foundation constructed by a generation of Bay Area refugees and native North Coasters who had worked to save their neighborhood from industrial logging.