US man returns to solid ground after spending 24 hours atop a 24m tree

Seattle police have managed to convince a man who had refused to come down from a 24-metre tree to return to ground after a 24-hour hour ordeal.

Local police were alerted to the 28-year-old tree climber on Tuesday morning and arrived on the scene to coax him to come down.

However, by midday, he had stripped the tree in the city’s CBD of its highest branches to construct a human “nest”.

In a statement, Seattle police said the man posed a danger to himself, pedestrians and motorists and several surrounding streets were closed.

Police officers spent hours atop a fire ladder trying to negotiate with the man and convince him to come down.

He refused to speak with officers for hours and threw an apple, branches, pine cones and other items at the people below.

He later claimed to be armed with a knife.

Yesterday afternoon, officers attempted to talk to him from the sixth floor of an adjacent building.

He yelled at them, made broad gestures with arms and stripped his pants, hung upside-down and exposed his buttocks toward them.

Not long after that, he was safely back on the ground after climbing down of his own volition.

The man has since been taken into custody and will receive a medical evaluation.

Police said he appeared to be “suffering from a crisis.”

As for the tree, now the incident is resolved, officials are set to review the health of the huge sequoia, which was planted in the 1970s.