Forest Defenders Are Calling on Locals to Defy Green Diamond’s Request that the Public Avoid the Trail to Strawberry Rock in Northern California

Trinidad, CA

On Wednesday morning, Green Diamond Resource Company began road work north of Tsurai (Trinidad) in a second-growth redwood rainforest that has been protected from harvest since 2012 by non-violent forest defenders and tree-sitters. After work began, Green Diamond published a press release requesting the public to avoid the popular hiking trail that leads to Strawberry Rock.

“We woke up to the sound of machinery just up the hill,” reported a tree-sitter on Wednesday. “Our ground support activists approached the machine operators and warned them that forest defenders were in the area and they should cease work for everyone’s safety. Green Diamond security arrived and said it didn’t matter because we were trespassing.”

Forest defenders are calling on locals to defy Green Diamond’s request that the public avoid the trail to Strawberry Rock, which passes through the area slated to be cut. “We ask that folks continue hiking the trail to Strawberry Rock as one way to oppose logging in this forest. The company cannot safely cut trees when hikers are nearby. This is the time to defend the forests that we and many other creatures call home. This forest is not for Green Diamond to log.”

In 2019, CalFire approved Green Diamond’s plan to clearcut roughly 100 acres directly surrounding Strawberry Rock, ignoring numerous public comments in opposition that called attention to stands of regionally endemic pricklecone pine (pinus muricata) that Green Diamond intends to convert into redwood plantations, based on data from the company’s Timber Harvest Plan (THP). Public comments also discussed the cultural value of Strawberry Rock itself. “If the company manages to go through with this THP, by the end of September the view from Strawberry Rock will be one of barren clearcuts on three sides,” a forest defender noted.

Thanks to an outpouring of community concern and several years of tree-sits and road blockades, the Company finally agreed to sell a portion of land surrounding the popular trail to the Trinidad Coastal Land Trust. But Green Diamond refuses to consider selling additional land. Tree sitters have called for the cancellation of this Timber Harvest Plan and say that their actions also have broader implications, “Our resistance here is for this particular forest, but it’s also for the vast temperate rainforest across the Pacific Northwest that is being decimated by industrial logging at the hands of massive companies. We stand in solidarity with climate justice and forest struggles worldwide that are defending life itself from corporate dominance.”

Media contacts:

Lupine, Redwood Forest Defense, (510) 904-7352

Meredith Dyer, Redwood Forest Defense, (707)719-2335