Climate Brief:Protesters occupy 200-year-old tree at US-Mexico border to stop its destruction
Guardian UK
Protesters occupy 200-year-old tree at US-Mexico border to stop its destruction: ‘She’s our Statue of Liberty’
Demonstrators stage ‘tree sit’ in Arizona town to stop felling of ancient cottonwood grove to make way for border wall
Protesters are staging a “tree sit” in a tiny Arizona town to prevent the destruction of a grove of ancient cottonwood trees as federal contractors race to build a row of two 30ft walls along the border with Sonora, Mexico.
The gathering ramped up last week in the town of Lochiel, in the remote San Rafael valley of south-east Arizona. On 27 July, contractors working for Fisher Sand and Gravel crushed three of the largest cottonwoods with excavators.
Now the group is defending a towering cottonwood. Estimated to be more than 200 years old, it is the last of the huge old trees right on the border that some locals call the “grandmothers”.
The group has now grown to include several dozen people, with many camping on private land with permission of the owner. The protesters help to support and feed a single rotating person who stays in a platform high in the tree at all times.
The demonstration has been peaceful. One person was arrested by the local sheriff’s department on the day the trees were taken down but was released the same day without being charged.
The protest includes environmental activists who are demanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency spare the cottonwoods. Kate Scott, one of the leaders of the tree-sit and founder of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, and Erick Meza, with the Sierra Club, have been spending many days in the area in recent months.
“The tree itself has become a symbol,” Meza said, both of the ecological importance of the area and the beauty that remains, but also “how much violence and destruction has happened on the border”.
The tree itself has become a symbol,” Meza said, both of the ecological importance of the area and the beauty that remains, but also “how much violence and destruction has happened on the border”.
The demonstration is already drawing national attention, including from Julia Butterfly Hill, who famously spent two years living in a redwood in California’s Humboldt county in the late 1990s, which led to it and other trees being saved, has reached out to the organizers of this gathering and hopes to visit to lend support.
“I always remind folks that when we see people doing direct action like this, it’s only because every other system has failed,” Butterfly Hill said. These people are “shining a light” on the devastation and destruction caused by border wall construction, she added.
The tree is in the path of a planned secondary wall being built about 60ft north of the border, along which another wall is also under construction nearby. A total of 384 miles of these secondary barriers are in development, according to CBP. Neither the DHS, CBP or Fisher replied to a request for comment.
Meza emphasized that while one border wall is destructive enough, a second one is even more so, besides being unnecessary due to negligible levels of border crossings in the area, and it threatens many other natural areas, including a desert oasis in south-west Arizona called Quitobaquito Springs. Part of the harm is severing wildlife corridors in one of the most biodiverse parts of the country, he said.
read more https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/04/protesters-occupy-tree-us-mexico-border
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