Canopy Tree Project
Speaking Out for the Trees
November 13, 2025
In 1700, forests covered 52% of Earth’s habitable land area. But human civilizations expanded and industrialized, increasing demand for land and resources led to widespread deforestation. Today, forests cover just over one-third of habitable land area, the portions of Earth suitable for living and not covered by ice, deserts, or oceans.
Forests are often cleared to make space for agriculture, factories, roads, and urban expansion, as well as to obtain valuable resources such as timber and fuel. But, deforestation leaves a lasting impact on local communities and wildlife, destroying habitats, harming soil health, and intervening in the interconnectedness of ecosystems.
Even within urban environments, trees face significant threats despite their vital ecological importance. Trees may not be able to speak for themselves, but these four activists put their lives on the line to protect their legacies.
Wangari Maathai
In 2004, Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace. But her story of social justice and environmentalism started decades prior.
In rural Kenya, women reported that food supplies were dwindling, local streams were drying up, and they were forced to walk increasingly long distances to collect firewood. So, in 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement. By bringing women together through grassroots efforts, the movement managed to plant nearly 51 million trees.
Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come.
Wangari Maathai
Maathai was an accomplished academic, and was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. She studied biological sciences, earning her PhD in veterinary anatomy from the University of Nairobi. Her scientific background helped her guide women toward an ecological solution that addressed both environmental degradation and community needs. The trees’ roots stabilized the soil, reduced erosion, and allowed rainwater to seep into the ground, replenishing underground aquifers and helping nearby streams flow again.
The Greenbelt Movement she started continues to operate today, focusing on restoring ecosystems, spreading climate change education to rural communities, and advocating for environmental policies. After Maathai’s death in 2011, the Wangari Maathai Foundation was established to further her legacy in empowering children and youth to be leaders in their communities.
A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded.
Wangari Maathai
Julia “Butterfly” Hill
Could you imagine living in a tree, suspended over a height of 180 feet, making home in the confines of a 6-by-8-foot platform, for over 700 days?
That’s exactly what Julia “Butterfly” Hill did from 1997 to 1999. She lived among the branches, admiring the leaves and wildlife that flocked to a 1,000-year-old California redwood tree, named Luna. At that time, the Pacific Lumber Company was logging the forest, putting Luna and the surrounding area at risk.
When you see someone in a tree trying to protect it, you know that every level of our society have failed — the consumers have failed, the companies have failed, the government have failed.
Julia Butterfly Hill
Over the next 738 days, Hill endured rushing winds and storms, talking to news reporters and leading negotiations from up in the branches. Eventually, Pacific Lumber Company agreed not to tear the tree down under a conservation easement and for Hill to pay the company USD$50,000 in lost logging revenue.
In 1999, Hill founded Circle of Life, a nonprofit supporting projects ranging from regenerative farming to sustainable fashion.
Nature’s wisdom teaches us that where life is in motion, it’s healthy; where it’s stagnant, it’s dying. But people have to interpret that journey in a way that’s authentic for them . . . whatever helps you. We call it “finding your own true north”– like on a compass. In production-driven societies, we’re tricked into believing that true north is outside of us. So we’re constantly looking outside ourselves to figure out if this is the right job, the right house, the right relationship, the right subject to be studying. But our true north is invariably inside us . . . if we do what we love to do, what we’re inspired to do, what we believe in, it creates an entirely different response.
Julia Butterfly Hill
Luna stands strong today, and is protected, but she sits on private land and there are no official public access routes. The monitoring organisation explicitly states they cannot encourage people to attempt to reach it due to concerns for its health (especially the root system and soil stability). But you can see her in Stafford, California, from Highway 101 near the Stafford exit, looking southwest.
Chico Mendes
Chico Mendes grew up in Acre, Brazil working alongside his father as a rubber tapper, collecting natural rubber by cutting grooves into tree bark. This fostered an interconnected relationship with the Amazon Rainforest, which he worked to defend his whole life.
In the 1970s and 1980s, ranchers started to buy up and clear the forest to make room for cattle. As a response, Mendes organized other Amazonian rubber tappers, and helped to establish the Xapuri Rural Workers’ Union. The group would participate in “empates,” during which protestors would peacefully hold hands, to protect the forest and their livelihoods. Mendes advocated for extractive reserves, where local people could continue to sustainably harvest tree rubber. Today, there are twenty reserves, one named in honor of Mendes, protecting the exact region, Acre, where he grew up.
At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.
Chico Mendes, 1988 interview with The New York Times
Tragically in 1988, Chico Mendes was assassinated by ranchers seeking revenge for his efforts to stop deforestation for cattle ranching. Despite this tragedy, his legacy has not wavered. The Chico Mendes Reforestation Project was established after his death, inspired by his environmental advocacy.
The project reforests community lands affected by illegal logging, and has planted around 5,000 to 20,000 trees a year since 1998. The World Bank, which once financed clearing the rainforest, is now financing the reserves.
We realized that in order to guarantee the future of the Amazon we had to find a way to preserve the forest while at the same time developing the region’s economy…We accepted that the Amazon could not be turned into some kind of sanctuary that nobody could touch. On the other hand, we knew it was important to stop the deforestation that is threatening the Amazon and all human life on the planet.
Chico Mendes, 1988 interview with Tony Gross, documented in Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in His Own Words
Thomas Brail
In 2022, Paris launched a tourism development project that threatened to fell a trio of Napoleon-era trees, growing near the Eiffel Tower. Thomas Brail, a dedicated arborist and founder of the Groupe National de Surveillance des Arbres,(GNSA), refused to accept their removal.
Here in France we’re not at all good at protecting trees, but it’s urgent. People need to wake up and realise that if we don’t have resilient forests, we won’t be able to face the challenges of global warming.
Thomas Brail
On 30 May he climbed one of the trees to protest and from 4 June he began a hunger strike from his perch. He emphasized that trees are not “street furniture” to be swapped out at a developer’s whim, but vital parts of the city’s history and ecosystem. Thanks in large part to his direct action and the public outcry, the plan was revised so as not to fell the trio of trees.
Brail has participated in several different moments of urban tree activism and the GNSA, or National Tree Monitoring Group, work to support the defense of trees wherever they stand from the threat of felling. When France proposed the A69 Project, the building of a new highway to connect two southwestern French cities, its route threatened to destroy up to 400 hectares of farmland and hundreds of trees.
In October of 2023, Brail began a hunger strike, and later a thirst strike, for which he would be hospitalized. In February 2025, courts stopped the construction of the highway thanks to Brail and other activists involved. But, as of May 2025, France’s senate allowed construction to continue and the decision has been met with much controversy.
EARTHDAY. ORG recognizes the ecological importance of forests to our livelihoods, cultures, ecosystems, and climate. That’s why EARTHDAY.org is working to plant 60 million trees by 2030.
We want to make a real impact empowering local communities, and “Rooted in Community” reflects our commitment to help people across the world living with the realities of tree loss by working with them on the ground to restore their trees and life-supporting forests.
Kathleen Rogers, President, EARTHDAY.ORG
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