Title: The Chipko Movement | War Resisters' International
Headings: The Chipko Movement
The Chipko Movement
The Spread of the Movement
Methods and Structure
Goals and Outcomes
Empowerment
Movement Demands and Achievements

Content: When a subsequent contract was awarded to a lumberer in the Mandakini valley, the contractor again faced the people's resistance. After the Mandal Chipko action, DGSM volunteers fanned out into all potential lumbering areas to educate and warn the people about the possible threat--and to share the success story of the Mandal Chipko movement. The turning point came in 1974, when lumbering rights in the Rani forest were auctioned off. Chipko workers, local people and students got involved in the movement in large numbers, demonstrating against the arrival of lumberers in the sensitive catchment area of the Rishi Ganga River near Reni village. The protest resulted in a dramatic victory. One day, the men of the area had gone away to the city of Chamoli to collect money owed to them as compensation for their lands. The Chipko representatives were also not there, because they had been called to Gopeshwar for consultation by the forest department. Only the women remained in the village: twenty-seven small bodies against many professional axe-men. Not worried about the odds against them, the women rushed to the felling site and clung to the marked trees while angry lumberers threatened them with their glistening axes.