Tree-Sitter, Timber Firm Negotiating End of 2-Year Vigil

Julia “Butterfly” Hill, whose two-year vigil in a giant Humboldt County redwood tree has inspired environmental activists and infuriated loggers, is negotiating with the Pacific Lumber Co. to leave her perch.

Neither side would discuss details of the talks, beyond saying that they are hopeful they can reach terms that will allow Hill to come down from the 180-foot-high platform that has been her home since Dec. 10, 1997.

An unemployed drifter who said she felt a spiritual kinship with the giant redwoods, Hill climbed the tree in support of environmental activists who confronted loggers in an effort to stop the harvest of old-growth redwoods.

Her marathon tree-sit has attracted global attention. Celebrities have visited her and held benefit concerts on her behalf. Thousands of people have sent letters of encouragement or visited Hill’s Web site, which offers organic T-shirts featuring a picture of Hill in return for a $25 donation.

Armed with a cellular phone, Hill, 25, has been interviewed hundreds of times. Her stay has been a public relations nightmare for Maxxam Corp., the Houston-based firm that owns Pacific Lumber and has become the focal point for environmental protests against the logging of old-growth trees in Northern California.

Hill has said she would stay in the tree until Maxxam agreed to never cut it down. Living on a 6-by-8-foot platform, she has endured two harsh Humboldt County winters in the branches of the 1,000-year-old tree that Earth First! activists dubbed “Luna” when they found it on a slope above the town of Stafford in October 1997.

Nancie Four Waters, a spokeswoman for Hill, cautioned that the talks are far from complete.

“We have been in conversations with Pacific Lumber, but this is not the first or second time we’ve been in conversation with them,” she said. “The last time we thought we were very close, and they put obstacles in the way.”

Four Waters said she expects Hill to be in the tree Sunday, when supporters have scheduled a vigil in Stafford, 240 miles north of San Francisco, to mark the second anniversary of her stay.

Still, she said, “Julia has never wanted to live in a tree. It is cold, uncomfortable and unpleasant. But her commitment is to the tree.”

Joshua Reiss, a spokesman for Maxxam, said the company is determined that any deal will “make sure that she does not tree-sit any longer on our property, nor does she encourage others to tree-sit.” The company is concerned, he said, that others might tree-sit, which “is not only illegal, it is highly dangerous,” he said.

Under terms of a proposed agreement, Hill and her supporters would pay $50,000 to Pacific Lumber in return for a company logging ban at the site--money that would be donated to Humboldt State University for future forestry research, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reported.

In March 1999, Maxxam agreed to sell 7,400 acres of its forest lands, including the old-growth Headwaters Grove, to the state of California and the federal government for $480 million. The agreement included a commitment by Maxxam to develop a habitat conservation plan on the more than 200,000 acres of Humboldt forest lands it still owns.