Julia Butterfly Hill

More than saving one tree

Biography
Quotes
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What You Can Do

"I wake up in the morning asking myself what can I do today, how can I help the world today. I believe in what I do beyond a shadow of a doubt."

During her two year stay in Luna, Hill received international publicity, conducted hundreds of interviews and news conferences 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 from being logged. 

Hill was unemployed -- the daughter of an itinerant preacher -- when she joined the forest protest movement that took off in Humboldt County after the Maxxam Corporation bought Pacific Lumber and began clear-cutting large tracts of forests. Nine months before Hill began her vigil living in Luna, in March 1999, 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. Then Pacific Lumber began logging the ancient redwoods that they could cut down legally.

 Luna began her protest by using civil disobedience, conducting a courageous vigil on behalf of one of the last wild places left in the US and one of the remaining 3% of old growth forests within the US.

What Hill did

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