Tree sitting is a strategy that provides a high level of public attention since it is considered to be very dangerous and requires highly skilled police officers to evict the sitters. Tree sitting is often used as a stalling tactic, to prevent the cutting of trees while lawyers fight in the courts to secure the long-term victories.
Tree-sitting was once a children's pastime. In the early 1930s, when endurance contests raged across the U.S., it became a child's contest for kids to climb into their backyard trees and, serviced by siblings and local businesses, attempt to win prizes for the longest sit.
Most of the extractions in Northern California are done under the leadership of Eric Schatz of Schatz Tree Service, a well known professional arborist.
In May 2021, RCMP forces in Canada extracted treesitters on Vancouver Island by flying a helicopter dangerously low above the trees and dropping ERT officers in the canopies or down on long lines to forcibly remove those occupying the sits. There was no communication, safety precautions taken, or research done into the stability of the sits prior to the helicopter landing. Until this point in time treesits had been extracted by girth hitching, shooting lines into trees, or waiting for those occupying the trees to come down.
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