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Map 1 Map 1 reveals the planned areas where the Forest Service will log SPLATs (Strategically Placed Local Area Treatments) which may include significant removal of trees up to and beyond 30 inches in diameter, and/or smaller clearcuts removing all tree cover. Such treatments can create additional fire hazards if slash and underbrush are not fully removed. They may also damage key wildlife habitat and remove the most fire resistant trees. (JPG file, 350kb) |
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Map 2 Map 2 shows the huge areas of the Monument that have been designated fire "Threat and Defense Zones" in the final alternative. By claiming that most of the Monument is located in the "wildland-urban interface," or WUI, the Forest Service allows itself much more intensive logging over most of the landscape. Typically the WUI is defined by the Forest Service as .25 mile from communities (defense zone), and 1.5 mile from communities (threat zone). But here it is many times larger. (JPG file, 350kb) |
Background:
Bush Administration Plans to Open Giant Sequoia National Monument to Commercial Logging
Giant Sequoia National Monument boasts two-thirds of all the sequoia redwoods in the world, with most of the remainder found in the adjacent Sequoia National Park. The popularity and awe-inspiring beauty of the sequoia forest and its wildlife led President Bill Clinton to permanently protectover 300,000 acres of the forest as a National Monument under the Antiquities Act. Earlier, President George Bush Sr. had proclaimed the sequoia groves off limits to commercial logging.
Now the Bush II administration has officially reversed those policies by finalizing plans to allow what amounts to commercial logging in the Monument, including within the prized giant sequoia groves. The administration's plan would allow 7.5 million board feet of timber to be removed annually from the Monument, enough to fill 1,500 logging trucks each year. This policy would include logging healthy trees of any species as big as 30 inches in diameter or more. Trees that size can be hundreds of years old.
On January 27, Sierra Club and other conservation groups filed suit in federal court, asking to overturn the final Monument management plan. "The plan will allow significant logging, reduction in forest cover and removal of large trees which are critical to survival of already threatened species such as the Pacific fisher," said Sierra Club legal director Patrick Gallagher, who helped prepare the suit. "The giant sequoia is the largest living thing on earth, and this is the only place they are found, and we ought to give them the utmost protection."
Help protect Giant Sequoia National Monument by signing our petition to President Bush.
Source of Data for Maps: USFS Giant Sequoia National Monument Final EIS Planning Team
Maps by Eric Beckwitt, GIS consultant. Maps are USFS documents in the public domain.
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