Since early this month, environmental educator John Quigley has spent most of his time perched high in the leafy boughs of a 400-year-old oak tree that developers want removed to expand a local road in Santa Clarita, Calif. The proposed throughway would enable traffic to flow to a suburban community where more than 21,000 new homes are planned in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, Susan Moloney has been fasting for six weeks outside the state capitol, growing increasingly gaunt and weak as she pressures Gov. Gray Davis (D) to put an end to old-growth logging in the state. She says Davis pledged during his first gubernatorial campaign to ban the practice. Spokespeople deny that Davis ever made such a promise, even though newspaper stories from the time seem to back up Moloney’s position.
