Julia Butterfly Hill and how she saved the Redwoods

 

JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL

On 28.12.2010  I wrote; ‘’I spend the afternoon watching Avatar on her very large, wall mounted TV screen. WOW………….now I know what all the fuss has been about, I was so bowled over by that film, it’s more like a religious experience than an animated film. I’m going to get the DVD and watch it over and over again.  I just loved that film, I found it moving’’

Now I think I’ve found the inspiration for the film, and if this wasn’t the original inspiration, it could easily have been.
Julia was/is an environmentalist who in 1997 climbed a huge red wood tree that is believed to be about 1500 years old and over 50 meters tall. The tree was threatened with destruction by the loggers and chainsaws of the Pacific Lumber Company. Watching Julia living in her tree, ‘who’ she called Luna, watching her climbing and walking around Luna , and hearing the way she tells her story, made me think of Avatar.  And yep I know that's a bit odd, I know Avatar is an animation, a fantasy, and Julias story is real, she is real and her struggle was real, but to me, they have a very similar 'feel'.

Julia's Story from;

http://www.circleoflife.org/inspiration/julia/

( this web site is not very well maintained and many of the pictures are missing, but the story is still there)

‘’For 738 days Julia Butterfly Hill lived in the canopy of an ancient redwood tree, called Luna, to help make the world aware of the plight of ancient forests. Julia, with the great help of steelworkers and environmentalists, successfully negotiated to permanently protect the 1,500 year-old tree and a nearly three-acre buffer zone. Her two-year vigil informed the public that only 3% of the ancient redwood forests remain and that the Headwaters Forest Agreement, brokered by state and federal agencies and Pacific Lumber/Maxxam Corporation, will not adequately protect forests and species.On December 18, 1999 Julia Butterfly Hill, then 26, came down to a world that recognized her as a heroine and powerful voice for the environment. Her courage, commitment and profound clarity in articulating a message of hope, empowerment, and love and respect for all life has inspired millions of people worldwide.’’

She has written several books about her experience
Book review from;

www.goodreads.com/book/show/7803.The_Legacy_of_Luna

The Legacy of Luna:

The Story of a Tree,

a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

On December 18, 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill's feet touched the ground for the first time in over two years, as she descended from "Luna," a thousandyear-old redwood in Humboldt County, California. Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree high on a mountain on December 10, 1997, for what she thought would be a two- to three-week-long "tree-sit." The action was intended to stop Pacific Lumber, a division of the Maxxam Corporation, from the environmentally destructive process of clear-cutting the ancient redwood and the trees around it. The area immediately next to Luna had already been stripped and, because, as many believed, nothing was left to hold the soil to the mountain, a huge part of the hill had slid into the town of Stafford, wiping out many homes. Over the course of what turned into an historic civil action, Hill endured El Nino storms, helicopter harassment, a ten-day siege by company security guards, and the tremendous sorrow brought about by an old-growth forest's destruction. This story--written while she lived on a tiny platform eighteen stories off the ground--is one that only she can tell.

And of course;

 YouTube is full of video clips of her and her tree.

 <