Protesters occupy 200-year-old tree at US-Mexico border to stop its destruction: ‘She’s our Statue of Liberty’

From the publisher

Protesters are staging a “tree sit” in a tiny Arizona town to prevent the destruction of a grove of ancient cottonwood trees as federal contractors race to build a row of two 30ft walls along the border with Sonora, Mexico. The gathering ramped up last week in the town of Lochiel, in the remote San Rafael valley of south-east Arizona. On 27 July, contractors working for Fisher Sand and Gravel crushed three of the largest cottonwoods with excavators. Now the group is defending a towering cottonwood. Estimated to be more than 200 years old, it is the last of the huge old trees right on the border that some locals…

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