On Wednesday, April 1, Redwood Forest Defenders occupied tree sits in the contentious Strawberry Rock timber harvest plan, calling on Green Diamond Company to stop logging now!

Green Diamond Resource Company (GDRC), a private timber company, has started industrial logging operations in the Strawberry Rock area in northern Humboldt County, a site culturally significant to the Yurok tribe. The group, Redwood Forest Defense is currently occupying the forest and a treesit platform has been raised into the canopy. The group is calling for GDRC to halt all logging in the area immediately.

Link to photos in Google Drive with a video of the tree climber.

“We are here to defend the forest against this contentious logging plan, even amid the coronavirus pandemic. We are risking our lives and ask that Green Diamond stop logging so that we can continue to quarantine at home,” stated Meredith Dyer, a forest defender.

The forest defenders cite new scientific studies detailed in the journal, Scientific American, among other sources, that claim destroyed habitat creates the perfect conditions for viruses, like the coronavirus, to emerge. “The coronavirus outbreak is part of the climate crisis. Green Diamond is directly responsible for destroying forest habitat and forcing animal populations to seek out human-dominated spaces, thus exposing humans to new strains of virus and disease,” says Dyer.

GRDC operates under a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) which creates certain parameters and limitations in cutting but does not include more up-to-date needs such as climate change. “Green Diamond’s HCP is a farce. They cut using ‘even-aged’ management which is just another name for clearcuts,” says Dyer, “You need to see this—the redwoods they’ve hacked down look like a slaughterhouse.”

Logging in the Strawberry Rock area has a long history of resistance. Beginning in 2012, logging operations were successfully stopped by forest defense tactics until the timber harvest plan expired in 2018. The company is now attempting to log the area under a new plan, was approved in November 2019, after more than a year of delay.

The activists say “We intend to occupy and protect this area until Green Diamond agrees to stop cutting here in perpetuity.”