Santa Cruz Earth First Ramsey2 Tree Sit; First Daylight Photos!

http://www.santacruz.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1560&group=webcast

Trees were cut from around the 1st tree sit on the ridge, "Critter" and "Free". Sitters claim the move was to deprive them of their comfortable shade, and also to scare them with the threat of being pulled or knocked down by wayward limbs as trees fell to the earth only a few feet away.

They also claim trees were felled which were unmarked, thus violating the Timber Harvest Plan as they could not have been approved for cutting during the Pre-Harvest Inspection conducted by the Registered Forest Professionals hired by Redwood Empires to oversee and administer the logging according to California Dept of Forestry guidelines.

They report sherrifs and Fish and Game officers having come to the site, attempting to convince the sitters to climb down and be arrested. The sits remain occupied 24/7, with no arrests.

Conversely, sitters have engaged loggers in conversation, trying to convince them to end the logging. RFP Peter Twight has reportedly visited the site in his white Ford F-150 pickup truck, lecturing sitters on the energy efficiency of lumber as a housing material, and taking sitters' property which had been left on or fallen down to the ground.

Meanwhile, Dragonfly and company have established 2 *more* tree sits at a 2nd location, "Fresco" and the other unnamed, down the slope by the creek at the edge of the CDF's Class II "buffer zone" and hope to extend a network of ropes out to and around many other trees nearby, creating a webwork that will force loggers to endanger the lives of sitters if any trees are felled in that area. In such an event, this would enable Earth Firsters to pursue damages and injunctions in court against Redwood Empires despite the land being the private property of RE CEO Robert Burch.

Downstream, Dragonfly pointed out siltation of the creek bed which he says is the result of errosion caused by Redwood Empire's violations during the Ramsey 1 harvest of 2002 on the opposite side. This siltation is said to interfere with the spawning of legally protected steelhead salmon which are known to swim up to at least 700ft short of the Timber Harvest Plan's boundaries.

Developing..