Talk:Tree spiking

Title
I tried to move this and then got in a muddle as I mis-capitalised the title. I deleted the redirects I created only to discover the page already exists at Tree spiking which is what caused the problems in the first place. I hope someone else can sort it out as I am going to sleep. Angela 04:17 BST.


 * Okay, I've moved Tree-spiking to Tree spiking, and I've merged the content of Treespiking into Tree spiking as well. Is that what your intention was? I hope so, because otherwise I've probably just messed things up even more... ;) -- Oliver P. 03:39, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Yep, that seems like what I would have done if I'd not been editing whilst sleeping. Angela

Condom link
Why does this page link with anti-rape female condom? If no one objects, I'm removing the link from both pages. Gimme danger 04:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Chainsaw range
Quote: 'A metal saw blade hitting an embedded spike could break or shatter, possibly injuring or killing loggers. This is why advocates of tree spiking say to drive the spike or nail into the tree above your head, where it'll be out of range of a chainsaw blade and not endanger the logger.' If it's out of range of a chainsaw blade, what's the point of spiking a tree? -Toptomcat 17:40, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That's actually a red herring. The point of spiking trees is to damage bandsaws in the mills that try and slice the tree up. Even if it's above head height, it doesn't matter from the point of the bandsaws in the mill: they slice the tree lengthwise. However, a logger cutting a tree down with a chainsaw could also be injured by the chainsaw hitting a spike. Of course, you could argue that properly used, bandsaws aren't going to injure anyone if they break, and consequently hammering the spike in at a height is merely to avoid injuring the loggers with the chainsaws.

ManicParroT 22:20, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Damage to tree
There's no information here about the damage tree spiking would do to the tree itself, which, as it seems to me, would negate the whole point. Something isn't entirely clear. --Earl chip (talk) 23:14, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Uncited
I removed this uncited content dated August 2009: "It is believed that tree spiking originated in timber logging labor disputes in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in the late 19th century." I consulted multiple sources, including back issues of the Earth First! magazine, and books including:


 * The Ecocentrists (Keith Mako Woodhouse, 2008)
 * Green Rage (Christopher Manes, 1990)
 * Tree Spiker (Mike Roselle, 2009)
 * Ecodefense (various eds)

and could not find support for this claim. The most likely source might be from the University of Washington's labor history website but I lack the energy to trawl through all the primary sources listed there.

This uncited claim has since spread around the web, so hopefully this is not re-added without a citation to an actual source that predates 2009. (Update: I've tracked down a potential lead in The New Settler Interviews by Beth Robinson Bosk, and may change this back once I obtain the book.) &mdash;Jonathan Chang 19:36, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

--

I removed this: "While both the County sheriff and Alexander's employers, Louisiana-Pacific, blamed environmentalists for the spiking, when Earth First! activist Judi Bari obtained the sheriff's files on the incident some years later, she discovered that one of the suspects for the spiking was Bill Ervin, a 50 year old property-owner, unconnected with Earth First!. While Ervin freely admitted spiking trees on his own land to prevent Louisiana-Pacific from taking timber on his side of the property line, he was never charged with spiking the tree that injured Alexander. " as it has sat, uncited for at least nine months, and Googling turned up no reliable sources. Achromatic (talk) 00:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What were you using as search terms? I googled "Bill Ervin spike" and found a lengthy online article, with sources, published on the IWW.org website as the number one result.  Is that not a reliable source?  98.208.96.56 (talk) 03:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Sentence needs improvement
Article currently reads: "An issue with safety has been raised after an injury incident ocurred when the blade of a worker broke and hit his body."

1) "... the blade a worker broke ... " -- this is clumsy. The blade of something broke, but what? A chainsaw seems likely, but I don't know.  Can someone who has more information please fix this?

2) "ocurred" is misspelled. (I will fix this.)

Karl gregory jones (talk) 05:06, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

TOC
Is there a good reason the TOC is right-aligned? --danhash (talk) 17:28, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Photo
Is File:Effect of tree spiking.jpg a useful image here? Despite the file title, it was once recaptioned as "Effect of nails for advertisement boards on a royal palm which are different from tree spiking", which I'm inclined to agree with: somebody genuinely spiking a tree would not put two nails in a line like this, and it looks like scraps of paper are visible around each nail. I'll remove the photo from the article for now. --Lord Belbury (talk) 19:09, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

This is not correct
The text reads sawmill worker George Alexander was nearly decapitated when a tree-spike shattered his sawblade at the Cloverdale -- however that is not the case, there was never any evidence that it was a tree spike regardless of what news reports claimed at the time, the nail that was struck was in a tree that had been used as part of a wire fence, the tree that the sawmill blade struck had not just that one nail but a section of barb wire embedded in the tree bark which wrapped around the wire and the nail.

The problem for the extant article is that news claims that it was a tree spike far out-number the safety inspection investigation and report documentation which found that it was a fence nail. Even in the news reports that it was a spike hammered by a human for deliberate sabotage are lacking references and citations to support that assertion whereas the various insurance and oversight entities extant at the time found that it was a fence nail that the blade encountered. SoftwareThing (talk) 19:28, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Tracy Stone-Manning
Her nomination has nothing to do with the subject of the article and deserves no mention except perhaps a parenthetical reference after her name. A separate paragraph is misplaced here.
 * I disagree. The only reason I came to this page to read about tree spiking was because of Tracy Stone-Manning's nomination.

Injury or Death
Is it fair to describe injury or death of a workers as a notable factor when later in the article it is clearly stated that only a single injury has ever been confirmed as a result of tree spiking? It seems like equipment destruction is the focus, and injury is at most an occasional consequence. 2600:387:F:4111:0:0:0:7 (talk) 12:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)