Logging Protester Killed by Tree

FORTUNA, Calif. (AP) - An Earth First! activist was killed Thursday when he
was struck in the head by a falling tree while trying to block logging in
an ancient redwood grove.

David Chain, a member of the radical environmental group, was with a group
of protesters who were standing among redwoods marked for logging and
trying to dissuade tree fellers when the tree hit him, sheriff's officials

Pacific Lumber Co. spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkel said its logging crew did
not see anybody in the area and had no idea Chain was standing nearby.
Chain's age and home town wasn't immediately available.

Loggers were felling trees when they heard yelling and learned someone was
in the area, said Melva Paris, spokeswoman for the Humboldt County
Sheriff's Department.

``It's easy to get hit by a tree out there,'' said Earth First! co-founder
Daryl Cherney. ``Even experienced activists or seasoned people - it doesn't
Earth First! had staged a 12-day protest against the logging of an ancient
redwood stand along Grizzly Creek, in a ravine near the mill town of
Fortuna, about 300 miles up the coast from San Francisco.

The protesters say the logging, on land adjacent to a ``lesser cathedral''
of centuries-old redwoods purchased under the $495 million Headwaters
Agreement, is destroying the protected habitat of the Marbled Murrelet, an
endangered seabird that nests in the tops of the majestic trees.

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