After living two years in giant California redwood to protest the logging of old-growth trees, Julia “Butterfly” Hill took her fight to ground-level yesterday. Hill, who descended from the branches in December, joined scores of other enviros in bringing a petition before the California state forestry board that would impose an immediate ban on old-growth logging, but after a contentious day-long hearing, the board rejected the proposal. State officials said the emergency ban would have affected as many as 23 million trees, or 31 percent of the total timber volume on private land in California. After meeting with activists on Tuesday, California Resources Secretary Mary Nichols’s tepid response was to order the state Department of Forestry to inventory ancient trees and develop recommendations for their protection.
