Tree spiking
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Tree spiking is a form of sabotage which involves hammering a metal rod or other material into a tree trunk in order to discourage logging.
It is believed that tree spiking originated in timber logging labor disputes in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in the late 1800s. It came to prominence as a contentious tactic within radical environmentalist circles during the 1980s, after it was advocated by Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman in his book Ecodefense.
The aim of tree spiking is to prevent trees from being cut down; thus, tree spikers tended to mark the spiked trees. (The claim that tree spiking was intended to deter logging by damaging mill equipment seems specious; without the marking of spiked trees, the trees would be cut down, thus defeating any enviromnental purpose.) Some sawmill operators check trees with metal detectors prior to milling. In turn, Foreman advocated the use of ceramic spikes which quickly become impossible to detect.
While Foreman claimed that injury to humans was an unlikely consequence of tree-spiking if the spiking was made known to authorities or logging companies, the tactic was condemned not only by the companies themselves, but by labor interests and, eventually, other members of Earth First!
In 1987, Californian mill worker George Alexander was seriously injured when the bandsaw he was operating was shattered by a tree spike. While both the County sheriff and Alexander's employers, Louisiana-Pacific, blamed environmentalists for the spiking, when Earth First! activist Judi Bari obtained the sheriff's files on the incident some years later, she discovered that one of the chief suspects for the spiking was Bill Ervin, a 50 year old property-owner, unconnected with Earth First!. While Ervin freely admitted spiking trees on his own land to prevent Louisiana-Pacific from taking timber on his side of the property line, he was never charged.
Tree spiking was declared a federal felony in the United States in 1988.
Many environmentalists believe that there has been far more rhetoric about tree spiking than actual cases, and believe that timber company public relations spokespersons have seized on it as a divisive issue to turn timber workers and dependent communities against environmental activists, particularly Earth First!
Recognizing this, Earth First! leader Judi Bari in 1990 led activists in Northern California and Southern Oregon to renounce tree-spiking as a tactic on the eve of Redwood Summer, a 1990 campaign of nonviolent protests against logging of the redwood forest.
See also
Compare with: tree sitting
External links
- The Secret History of Tree Spiking (http://www.iww.org/unions/iu120/local-1/EF/JBari11.shtml) by Judi Bari
- Earth First! Memo: Tree-spiking renunciation (http://www.things.org/~jym/ef/tree-spiking-memo.html)