This has come up on another BBS, and someone raised the question of whether there have been any actual deaths or maimings caused by tree spiking. I have to admit, I’ve never questioned it myself. I certainly can’t point to specifics.
Is there a documented case?
why the hell would anybody wanna pour everclear in a tree?
Maybe the trees belong to a college fraternity.
From Spokesman-Review
"The U.S. Senate approved 40-year maximum prison terms for people convicted of spiking trees in national forests on Wednesday.
The bill, introduced by U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was attached to the Interior Appropriations Act.
“Congress has sent a clear message to domestic terrorists who are willing to risk killing a person in order to save a tree,” Craig said. No one has ever been killed as a result of a spiking, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
When he introduced the bill in July, Craig claimed to know several people maimed and killed by spikes. Thursday, his office still could not produce a list of names.
“We want to make sure we research this pretty completely,” a Craig spokesman said. “Apparently there isn’t any one official list anywhere.”
The U.S. Forest Service, meanwhile, has records of about two dozen spiking incidents throughout the country and one injury."
Note this is from 1995.
Here’s another one:
http://www.acclaimedmedia.com/voafa/letters/16a.htm
"Eco-Terrorists Tactics Injure Humans
In response to the “Defending eco-terriost.”
What kind of person would knowingly print false and misleading information such as this. Tree spiking is not elobrate hoax created by the Timber industry to scare the logger. It is a very real and dangerous threat. I don’t know of anyone ever being killed, but I do know of more than one person being hurt badly by such tactics. It was not a logger who was hurt but someone in the saw mill when the spike was struck.
Thank you for your time.
A pissed off logger!
William J Hrdlicka
Chugiak, AK"
I’ve only been able to turn up one incident in my few minutes of searching, but it’s mentioned in several places. A couple of them (though from the same organization):
http://iww.org/iu120/local/historical-archives-1985.html
http://bari.iww.org/iu120/local/Judi3.html
In other places (including a Congressional transcript, so who knows the validity) it’s said that he died.
I have never heard of this. What is it exactly?
It should be noted that eco-terrorists did not invent the practice of tree spiking. I’ve had a couple conversations with people who were under that impression.
Anyone here read Sometimes a Great Notion? There’s a tree spiking incident in that book, which was written in the early 60s. Admittedly that’s fiction, but I’d doubt Kesey invented it either. As shown in that book, tree spiking was a tactic used by unions against non-union companies. If someone were to hunt back through old issues of the Oregonian or other newspapers from the northwest, they might find reports of injuries from tree spiking.
Tactic of driving a metal spike into a tree as a deterrent to logging, the idea being that one would not happily introduce one’s chainsaw to a situation where the blade could be broken and come off at high speed, causing serious injury or death.
Of course, for it to properly be a deterrent and to avoid incredibly bad PR, Earth First! (back when they condoned the procedure) would spray paint a mark on a tree after spiking it. However, there’s no guarantee that all people who spike trees are so considerate.
Personally, I love the outdoors and am rather pro-environmental measures, but I would be happy to see any and all eco-terrorists and radical environmentalists who approve of this sort of thing fenced in their own little section of Alaska and left there.
if this involves putting metal in a tree to sabotage it, i know of at least one case that doesn’t quite fit the bill. it was one of the first things i remember reading in readers digest.
a piece of metal had been put next to the tree when it was a sapling to keep it straight. there was this guy who was cutting through the tree with his chainsaw (he had taken the guard off because the tree was rather thick, and the guard only allowed it to go so deep). BRRDDDAAAAPPKK! the chainsaw almost flew out of his hands.
luckily, he didn’t cut his arm off or anything. he walked back to his truck, and on the way there, noticed that the whole front of his shirt was getting wet. upon reaching the car, he looked into the side mirror and sho nuf, there was a gaping wound in his neck. he somehow managed to drive to the closest house, stumbled out, and knocked on the door. at first the people thought he was an undead jehovah, but soon let him in and called the ambulance.
when the ambulance came they put him into an inflatable suit.
I think the target of spiking isn’t the loggers, but the saw mill. The idea is to cause significant property damage at the mill. Granted, there is a significant danger to the humans working at the mill, but most modern mills have few humans on the floor. And of course, there is some danger to the loggers as well.
Spikes aren’t driving near the base of the tree, where a logger would/could notice the spike hole, but higher up so it only would matter when running the log through the band saw at the mill. Also, the logger could easily miss the spike, a band saw cutting the log lenghtwise is almost certain to hit it.
Many of the big mills in the Pacific NW have installed metal detectors to scan the logs as they come in. This is particularly true for the new mills designed to handle the largest logs, which are the ones most likely targeted by monkey wrenchers.
What? Is that a euphemism, like ‘sleeps with the fishes’?