A Californian woman finally returned to earth at the weekend after saving the giant redwood tree that had been her home since December 1997.
Ms Julia Butterfly Hill lived in the 200 ft (60 m) redwood as a one-woman protest against continued logging of the trees, which can live for 2,000 years and which once covered 2 million acres of the western US.
Ms Hill reached an agreement with the Pacific Lumber Company, which owns the land, that her tree - which she called Luna - and a 2.9 acre buffer zone around it would be spared the axe. In return, Ms Hill and her supporters promised to pay $50,000 to Pacific Lumber to make up for the lost logging revenues that her protest had caused. As part of the settlement, Pacific Lumber donated the money to Humboldt State University for forestry studies.