WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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A group calling itself the ‘Night Owls, Paint and Exteriors,’ or NOPE, spray painted hundreds of trees in Yellowwood State Forest over the weekend in an attempt to thwart logging efforts.
On Thursday, a bid to selectively log 299 acres of state forest was awarded to Hamilton Logging company.
An anonymously published article in the online ‘Earth First Journal,’ by Night Owls stated they spray-painted hundreds of trees with spray-paint markings identical to those of the Department of Natural Resources.
The group stated, “We did this to obscure the trees Hamilton Logging bought, and to force the DNR’s Division of Forestry to redo the work of marking these tracts, thus delaying when logging can start,” unquote.
Hundreds of protesters turned up during Thursday’s bidding process, including members of the Indiana Forest Alliance, who were behind the Save Yellowwood Encampment.
Indiana Forest Alliance Development Director Paul Bryan says the Alliance sees the spray painting of the trees as counter-productive, particularly as the Forest Alliance attempts to garner support in the Governor’s office to stop the logging.
Bryan says the Forest Alliance is encouraging residents across the state to contact their legislators and voice their opposition to the Yellowwood logging.
The statement from the Night Owls continues, “Logging all currently-marked trees would be a violation of the contract between the two parties, which only includes the trees the DNR chose to mark, not the hundreds more we marked with identical paint and markings. We hope that by painting these additional trees we can stop them from taking any of them – or at least slow them down,”.
The article encouraged others to spray paint trees with similar markings around Yellowwood.
The legality of whether or not Hamilton Logging would be in violation of their contract with the DNR if they logged the hundreds of trees in Yellowwood marked with the specialized blue spray-paint was not immediately verifiable by WFHB.
