Environmentalists Taking a Leaf From Tarzan’s Tree

He’s Tarzan and she’s Jane, and together the swinging pair have put themselves out on a limb over what they consider a pressing environmental issue. Greg King and Jane Marie Cope--their real names, the others are code names--have set up house 150 feet above the ground in redwood trees as a protest against a cutting operation by a lumber company in the forest near Eureka, Calif. The couple, both 26, already face arraignment next week in Fortuna Justice Court over a similar protest in August, but that didn’t stop them from ascending to the treetops again when Pacific Lumber Co. increased its cutting operation. The two members of Earth First! have erected an enormous banner near where they are living on platforms, swinging from tree to tree on ropes they have rigged themselves. They are protesting that the toppling of the old-growth redwoods will lead to the demise of wild animals and plants dependent on the forest environment.

--All in all, it had not been a good month for those choosing to live in trees. In Minneapolis, a judge ordered a man to stop construction on a seven-story tree house he is building for his children and to end public tours of the structure, which he has been conducting to raise funds for his legal dispute with the city. Mark Tucker has been fighting City Hall since May, when inspectors said the structure violated building codes. But, while the city still intends to enforce the codes under the injunction ordered by Hennepin County Judge Daniel Hart, Hart did say the Tucker family could continue to use the tree house.

--The posted speed limit was 70 m.p.h., but Capt. Mark Phillips, husband of Britain’s Princess Anne, was doing 103 m.p.h. when he was caught on the highway outside Newbury, in western England. The son-in-law of Queen Elizabeth was subsequently fined $200 but was allowed to keep his driver’s license. Not so fortunate was another member of the royal family, the Queen’s nephew, Viscount Linley, whose license was suspended for six months after he was caught going 98 m.p.h. on the same highway.

--Buried treasure or a can of worms, no one’s sure what’s in the mysterious crate that belonged to Spanish-American War Adm. Charles Mason Remey, but officials at the Iowa Historical Museum in Des Moines say they will obey instructions that it not be opened until 1995. “We don’t have any idea what’s in it,” said Jerome Thompson, museum director, who supervised the 80-pound box’s recent move to a new museum building.