Tree-Sitter, Lumber Firm Reach an Agreement

More than two years after she began her marathon tree-sit, Julia “Butterfly” Hill has reached an agreement with Pacific Lumber Co. to leave the giant Humboldt County redwood tree she has called home, a company spokesman said Friday.

Hill could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman said she will hold a news conference today “in person” in the former logging town of Stafford. The spokeswoman declined to discuss the agreement.

But sources close to the negotiations said the two sides had agreed that Hill’s supporters will donate $50,000 to Pacific Lumber Co., which will in turn give the money to Humboldt State University for forestry research. The logging company has agreed to refrain from logging the tree Hill fought for, or any trees within a 250-foot buffer zone on the slope around it.

Word that Hill was close to an agreement with Pacific Lumber became public more than a week ago, but Hill said she was doubtful there would be a deal. She accused Pacific Lumber of trying to force her to sign away her constitutional rights by requiring her to denounce tree-sitting as a protest activity and forgo any profits from her stay in the redwood.

Pacific Lumber spokesman Joshua Reiss declined Friday to discuss the terms of the agreement.

“All I will say is that we are pleased that we have reached an agreement with Miss Hill that will bring her safely out of the tree,” he said.

Living on a tiny platform slung between branches 150 feet above the earth, Hill became a poster child for environmental activists, conducting hundreds of interviews and entertaining celebrity visitors. Her protest attracted more attention than any other demonstration by the thousands of environmental activists who have fought for more than a decade to preserve ancient redwood trees.

Pacific Lumber, owned by the Houston-based Maxxam Corp., denounced Hill as a trespassing law-breaker who put her life in danger and encouraged others to do so by example. But several times during her protest, Pacific Lumber officials negotiated with Hill’s representatives. Each time, negotiations broke down amid mutual recriminations.

Hill, 25, was an unemployed drifter--the daughter of an itinerant preacher--when she joined the forest protest movement that took off in Humboldt County after Maxxam Corp. bought Pacific Lumber and began clear-cutting large tracts of forests.

In March, Maxxam agreed to sell 7,400 acres of its Humboldt property to the state and federal governments for $480 million to preserve the ancient Headwaters grove and other redwood forests. Hill and other environmentalists denounced the deal for preserving too little of the forests and paying Maxxam too much.