The funny thing is, if you've ever heard of where the word comes from, you'll realize that treehuggers are totally badass. And it complicates the idea that environmental activists are always fighting for a world where no human every touches a tree.
The Chipko movement started in India in the 1970s, in regions in the Upper Himalayas where communities were constantly being given the short end of the stick and denied their traditional forestry rights by the national Forest Department. The region had started to get more accessible to commercial logging, and people began getting frustrated as the government awarded major contracts to these large loggers and denied them access to smaller amounts of trees in their own homelands. Deforestation and land degradation were becoming serious issues.
The most famous incident I know about, where the idea of a modern treehugger was really born, was in a village called Reni, in 1974. There had already been a number of nonviolent protests in the region over huge contracts being given out. The government announced it was going to allow the removal of 2500 trees near the village, and tempers were high between them and the villagers, who'd joined a group of Gandhian activists stirring up opposition throughout the region. Then in March, the government convinced the men to come to a bogus meeting in another village while the logging trucks moved in. When the women found out, they ran out to convince the loggers to stop. And when that didn't work, they put their bodies between the axes and the trees.
And they won.
I don't know if I'd have the guts to do what those women did. But I'd be proud to be called a treehugger any day.
