Julia Butterfly Hill
- This article is about Julia Butterfly Hill. For the species of butterfly, see Dryas julia.
Julia Butterfly Hill (born 18 February, 1974) is an American activist and environmentalist. Hill is best known for living in a 180-foot-tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between 10 December, 1997 and 18 December, 1999. Hill lived barefoot in the tree, named "Luna", to prevent loggers of the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down. Hill lived in a small 6-by-8-foot shelter that she had built with help of other volunteers.
A native of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Hill suffered a mild brain injury in a car crash a year before her tree-sitting experience.[1] She embarked on a spiritual quest afterwards, rejected the faith of her childhood and came away believing that we could transform ourselves; this eventually lead her to the environmental cause opposed to the destruction of the redwood forest in Humboldt County, California. Originally, Hill was not officially affiliated with any environmental organization, deciding upon herself to undertake the act of civil disobedience. Soon, Hill was actively supported by Earth First!, among other organizations and volunteers.
A resolution was reached in 1999 when the Pacific Lumber Company agreed to preserve Luna and all trees within a 3-acre buffer zone. In exchange, Hill agreed to vacate the tree. In addition, $50,000 that Hill and other activists raised during the cause was given to the logging company (a somewhat controversial action amongst fellow activists), as stipulated by the resolution. The $50,000 Earth First! paid to Pacific Lumber was then donated to a local university to do research about sustainable forestry.
In 1999, Hill and other activists founded the organization Circle of Life Foundation.
In 1999, she was also featured in a German documentary about California, called "California Dreamin'" (Part 3 - Wellenreiter "Wave Rider") where she told about living on "Luna". The documentary is still aired periodically late at night on the German television station "Phoenix".
Hill was the subject of the 2000 documentary film Butterfly, and she is featured in the documentary film Tree-Sit: The Art of Resistance, both chronicling her time in the redwood tree. Hill also appears as herself in Philip Seymour Hoffman's film Last Party 2000, a 2001 documentary which chronicles the six months leading-up to the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Trey Anastasio and Tom Marshall wrote a song called Kissed by Mist about Julia. The Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Can't Stop" contains the line "J. Butterfly is in the treetops". The first season of Penn & Teller's controversial program of skepticism, Bullshit!, featured her in a rather negative light. In this program Julia states that she would never cut down a tree for paper as it is a stupid waste of a natural resource. She also states that Luna poured sap during her tree-sitting and that she realised that this was the tree conveying its grief during the felling of other trees. Also related, in the popular TV show The Simpsons (the fourth episode of the twelfth season of The Simpsons), Lisa climbs the oldest redwood tree in Springfield to prevent it from being cut down, an obvious refrence to Julia.
In May 2006, Hill, Daryl Hannah, and Joan Baez were among the activists who took up residence in a walnut tree at the South Central Community Garden, Los Angeles, where they claim working-class immigrants tended crops, but that landowner Ralph Horowitz wished to develop.
Hill is the author of the book The Legacy of Luna and co-author of One Makes the Difference.
Trivia
- In 2000 the city of Berkeley, California designated April 2nd Julia Butterfly Hill day.