hile Operation Redwood is a work of fiction, the true history of the battle over California’s redwoods is a fascinating story of money, courage, greed, protest—and even a few tree-sitters.

In 1848, when gold was first discovered in California, two million acres of redwood trees blanketed the northern coast. Most of this land was bought up (sometimes fraudulently) by large timber companies. The companies proceeded to chop down trees as fast as they could, first using axes and cross-cut saws, then moving on to chain saws and giant machinery. By the 1960s, most of the original redwood forest had been cut down.

One company, Pacific Lumber Company, took a more long-range approach. It had been in the logging business since 1863 and owned more than 200,000 acres of redwood forest along California’s northern coast—an area about the size of New York City. While other companies clear-cut their land, removing every tree over hundreds of acres, Pacific Lumber practiced selective logging—leaving up to 30 percent of the trees in the harvest area standing. By the 1980s, the largest groves of ancient redwoods left on private land (“the Headwaters”) were owned by Pacific Lumber.

All this valuable timber caught the eye of an investor from Texas named Charles Hurwitz. His company, Maxxam, Inc., was one of the richest and most powerful in the world. In 1985, he hired consultants to fly over the Pacific Lumber lands. They concluded that the trees were worth a fortune. He began quietly buying shares of stock in Pacific Lumber until Maxxam was ultimately able to take control of the whole company. But there was a cost—$750 million dollars. To make enough money to pay off this debt, Pacific Lumber began chopping down trees twice as fast as it had before. And it began plans for cutting down the Headwaters.

Many people were outraged that one of the most beautiful and rare forests in the world could be destroyed for a single company’s profit. Environmental groups filed lawsuits to stop the logging. People chained themselves to the trees. Thousands swarmed a sawmill where the trees were cut into lumber and formed human chains blocking bulldozers and logging trucks. Some activists moved into the trees. The most famous, a young woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, lived in her tree, nicknamed Luna, for over two years, while her friends and fellow activists provided her with necessities such as food, water, clothes, and batteries. Some tree-sitters came down on their own. Others were brought down by “Climber Dan,” a skilled tree climber hired by Pacific Lumber to remove the protestors by force.

The fight over Headwaters Forest finally got so big that the United States government and the state of California stepped in. In 1999, they paid Pacific Lumber $480 million in exchange for 10,000 acres of ancient and second-growth redwoods that would be protected in a preserve. Eight additional redwood groves, totaling 8,000 acres, were spared from logging for a fifty-year period. While Pacific Lumber could continue logging on its remaining land, it had to follow a Habitat Conservation Plan—a set of rules designed to protect endangered species like the Northern spotted owl, the coho salmon, and the marbled murrelet, a seabird that nests in old-growth forests.

The story didn’t stop with the Headwaters deal. There was continued controversy over whether the Habitat Conservation Plan did enough to protect wildlife and streams and allowed too much logging in the land outside the preserves. In 2007, Pacific Lumber filed for bankruptcy and a year later, its lands were taken over by another company that promised to be a better steward for California’s redwood country. Many will be watching to see if this promise is fulfilled.

Today, experts estimate that roughly 100,000 acres of old-growth redwood remain in the world. Fortunately, most is protected in parks and preserves like the Headwaters Forest Reserve. About twenty percent, however, is located on private lands where it may be subject to logging under state and local regulations. Redwoods continue to need the protection of people, young and old, who care about forests and the diverse life they support.