Stephen Tamatea King (born 1952/1953) is a New Zealand botanist and conservationist, known for his barefoot campaigns to protect native forests.
King gained national prominence in 1978 for his campaigns to protect native forests from logging, after leading the world's first treesitting protest on an ancient tōtara tree.
King made headlines in 1978, as part of a group of protesters that spent a week staying on a tōtara tree, in protest of the felling of thousand-year old trees in what is now the Pureora Forest Park. On 18 January the protesters started climbing and occupying trees following an anti-logging protest involving a hundred people, and after logging was suspended on 21 January for safety reasons, an indefinite hold was placed on 24 January. A full logging ban was introduced three years later. by 1984 the trust had planted 25,000 native trees in Pureora alone. In October 1990, Prime Minister Mike Moore announced that Pureora would be restored as a native forest.
Personal life
King has notably spent the majority of his life barefoot, stating he "loves the feeling of beneath his feet".