Death of David Chain
American environmentalist
David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain (June 17, 1974 – September 17, 1998) was an environmental activist. He was killed by a falling tree in suspicious circumstances during a protest in California Redwood Forests against the Pacific Lumber Company.
Background
Chain was a member of the Earth First! environmental advocacy group and was engaged in a campaign of tree sitting in order to stop what they considered was illegal logging, in breach of California Forest Practices Act, in the Headwaters Forest, 350 miles (560 km) north of San Francisco, near Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. Headwaters was the largest private holding of old-growth forest in the world. Following a hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber Co., the Murphy family (the largest minority stock holders at the time) and countless previous stockholders, mostly company employees, were relieved of their stock by Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam, Inc. corporation of Texas. Between a desire to turn a higher profit and the need to start paying off the debt incurred from acquiring the company, Hurwitz's Maxxam replaced the sustainable growth policy of the previous owner-managers with one of clearcutting. The new practices led to the so-called Redwood Summer campaign by environmentalists, and ultimately forced the 140-year-old company to declare bankruptcy.
Many residents of the area made their living through logging.
“Death of David Chain” enters the record as american environmentalist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Death, David and Chain can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5232277. VIAF identifies the subject as 78149749. The Library of Congress control number is n2003012416. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Death of David Chain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.