2 Tree-Sitters Staving Off Ax at
Wachusett, Massachusetts

PETER DeMARCO / Boston Globe 10sep03

PRINCETON—decade-long battle between environmentalists and Wachusett Mountain Ski Area operators over the clearing of forest for new ski slopes has finally come down to this: a pair of protesters nicknamed "Dandi Lyon" and "Badger" sitting amid the doomed treetops, refusing to budge.

Using a radical tactic normally associated with the preservation of California redwoods, but rarely, if ever, seen on the East Coast, the two members of the group Earth First! scaled the 100-foot tall Northern red oaks on Aug. 1. With sleeping bags and several weeks' worth of canned goods, they have lived among the boughs on wooden planks no bigger than kitchen table tops, weathering lightning storms and lowering their bagged wastes by rope to the ground. But a showdown may be drawing near. Yesterday, a construction crew driving heavy machinery moved into the forest to prepare the area for cutting, sparking a verbal skirmish on the ground between other protesters and the workers. State Police ushered those protesters out without incident, but Lyon and Badger, far from anyone's reach, say they are not moving.

"We'll stay up here as long as we can," yelled Lyon, a 21-year-old Fitchburg woman, from her perch. "I can't see this being destroyed for someone's greed." Wachusett Mountain Associates, a private firm owned by the Crowley family of Polar beverages fame, first proposed adding two new ski slopes, dubbed Alpine Park, on the mountain in the early 1990s. But the 1995 discovery of a rare, old-growth forest on the upper slopes of Mount Wachusett, including trees more than three centuries old, brought environmentalists out in force.

Hoping to end the controversy, the ski association agreed not to lop any of the old trees, and to leave a 500-foot buffer zone around the oldest trees. After public hearings, the state Office of Environmental Affairs approved the scaled-back project, which calls for two 1,500-foot ski runs and a chairlift.

"Wachusett employs over 1,000 people a year and pays over $1 million a year in taxes and fees," explained Tom Meyers, marketing director for the ski area operators. "We need to stay competitive. If we are not competitive, skiers will look elsewhere."

Wachusett Mountain Associates officials also stress that the proposed Alpine Park is only 20 acres, and trees will be cut on no more than 12.5 acres, an extremely small portion of the 2,000-acre Wachusett Mountain State Reservation, where the ski lodge and trails are located.

But environmentalists argue that the old-growth forest needs a far greater buffer zone to survive, and they stress that the developer only leases the site from the state. "They don't own these lands. They don't need to do this expansion," said James McCaffrey, director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club, who called on Governor Mitt Romney yesterday to intervene. "These are irreplaceable natural resources.

The Sierra Club, along with the local Watchdogs for an Environmentally Safe Town, had succeeded for four years in blocking the project. But Friday, after numerous lower court decisions both for and against the environmentalists, the state Supreme Judicial Court rejected their final appeal. Felix Browne, a spokesman for the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which controls the state reservation, said his agency is satisfied that the proposal "strikes a good balance between conservation and regulation."

Yesterday at 11:30, as Jason Kotoch, Earth First! media coordinator for Massachusetts, led reporters to the tree-sitters, the protesters encountered the work crew. Immediately, Kotoch stepped in front of a large front-end loader.

"There are people sitting in trees above us. This action is putting their lives in danger," he said.

"We're not putting people's lives in danger. We're not cutting any trees," said a worker.

Minutes later, Tim McGuire, environmental engineer and project manager for the ski area, ordered the protesters to leave or face arrest. But the tree sitters, who would not give their actual names, remained. They have not chosen an easy locale for their protest. More than 80 feet in the air, strapped to the swaying boughs by safety harnesses and protected from the elements only by thin, blue tarps, they are linked with supporters only by cellphones and the occasional visit. The most famous tree-sitter, Julia Butterfly Hill, once protected a tree in California for two years. So long as Badger and Lyon remain aloft, resort officials pledged not to do any work that places them in harm's way.