Another tree-sitter takes spot in area woodlands
Jason Nickey / Herald-Times 2apr01
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Mary Demkovich sits in a tree Sunday to protest logging at Yellowwood State Forest in Brown County. Demkovich vows to remain in the branches until the state bars logging in the area. Staff photo by Jeremy Hogan |
Monroe County is no longer alone as the only county in Midwest with a young woman living in a red oak tree.
Mary Demkovich, a 21-year-old former Indiana University student, took to the heights Friday in Brown County's Yellowwood State Forest to protest logging on public land.
She now calls home a small platform 30 feet above the ground, and says she's staying there "for as long as it takes" to stop logging in the area.
"I'm prepared to stay out here three years if that's what it takes," she said, "even if every tree around me is cut down."
Demkovich's tree-sit -- which she said is unaffiliated with any environmental group -- came a week after Tracy "Dolphin" McNeely began her vigil over Brown's Woods on Bloomington's West side in an attempt to block a low-income housing development.
Though she doesn't know McNeely, Demkovich said she supports her.
But she is quick to point out the differences in the issues their protesting.
"These issues are totally different," she said, "That's private land (where McNeely sits) and this land belongs to the public, and they're selling it for the profit of a few companies, instead of letting everyone benefit from it."
The moss and lichen-covered tree in which Demkovich sits is tagged with an orange spray-painted dot near its base, marking it for logging.
The oak grows along a steep creek bed near the north end of Yellowwood State Forest, just off Dubois Ridge Road, in the middle of a 30-plus-acre tract that was part of a recent timber sale administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
As of Sunday afternoon, Demkovich said she hadn't been warned against trespassing by DNR officers.
"This is a nonviolent and civil act to keep this area from being logged, but also to keep state land everywhere from being logged," she said.
Besides her protest, Demkovich, a former environmental science student at IU, said she is keeping a log of all the birds she sees while living in the tree she has named "Prometheus."
Reporter Jason Nickey can be reached at 331-4378 or by e-mail at jnickey@heraldt.com
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