Hug Trees: Poster for Tree Huggers

18" x 12" poster on poster stock.

Hug Trees

The original tree-huggers were women who defended the Himalayan forest from logging with their bodies. "Tree-hugger" has since become an insult. Tree-huggers defend our common future: they protect that which sustains us. It's hard to understand how that can be a bad thing.

I personally am proud to hug trees whatever that means.

Wikipedia says: The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan (literally "to cling" in Hindi) is a social-ecological movement that practised the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and non-violent resistance, through the act of hugging trees to protect them from being felled. The modern Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand,[1] with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation. The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department. Their actions inspired hundreds of such actions at the grassroots level throughout the region. By the 1980s the movement had spread throughout India and led to formulation of people-sensitive forest policies, which put a stop to the open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as Vindhyas and the Western Ghats.