Tree Spiking

Unfortunately, Earth First groups are going back to their old tactic of tree spiking, which is the strategy of fighting for the earth by driving metal spikes into trees so that they will break machinery and workers’ faces. Let us examine the last time this was a big tactic for Earth First:

A tree cut down in a forest owned by Louisiana-Pacific near Elk was going through a large band saw when the jagged-tooth blade struck an 11-inch nail that had been driven into the log. The force caused a 10- to 15-foot section of the blade to fly off its track and hit millworker George Alexander, 23, in the face.

The blade ripped through Alexander’s safety helmet and face shield, tore his left cheek, cut through his jawbone, knocked out upper and lower teeth and nearly severed his jugular vein, the company said. Alexander, who has worked for the company for less than a year and was married a month ago, is resting at home and will have to undergo plastic surgery and will require false teeth, the company said.

A workers’ destroyed face in defense of Mother Earth, I guess.

The problems with tree spiking are manifold. First, in the recent Oregon case I linked to above, the trees are already cut. They can’t exactly be put back. There’s just no real point here. Second, if you want working people to truly hate environmentalists, just keep having radical greens threaten their lives. Earth First turned its back on this idiocy in the early 90s during the Judi Bari days, but of course EF is not exactly a cohesive organization and people can basically do what they want. I don’t want old growth trees to be cut either (and in fact, there’s not many being cut anymore because most mills can’t handle logs that size), but risking the lives of workers is not a good strategy to fight against it.