Giant Sequoia At Risk in Congress
When Giant Sequoia National Monument was set aside as a gift for future generations by President Bill Clinton in 2000, it should have closed the books on whether to develop one of Mother Nature's finest works. The area is home to more than half of all the Giant Sequoias in the world and an international treasure of the highest order.
But bad ideas never die. This past summer, a House Resources subcommittee took up legislation that would allow several commercial logging projects in Giant Sequoia National Monument to move forward and shield the timber sales from any environmental or legal review-even though a federal judge threw out the sales as illegal because the Forest Service had failed to study how the logging would affect the threatened Pacific fisher, an animal specifically designated for protection within the Monument.
In addition to logging Giant Sequoia Monument, the bill (H.R. 5760) proposed by Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) would also exempt from review another highly controversial 130,000 acre logging experiment in the Kings River watershed nearby in nearby Sierra National Forest. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have expressed concern that the project would devastate endangered animals, including the Pacific fisher.
The Nunes bill is only the latest assault on this celebrated Giant Sequoia forest. The Bush administration has also tried to turn back the clock with a plan for major logging in the Monument, including 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 have included logging of healthy trees of any species as big as 30 inches in diameter or more. Trees that size can be as much as 300 years old. A federal court recently threw out the plan, lambasting it as "indecipherable."
The Sierra Club is working with its allies to stop the Nunes bill, which is meant to benefit a local sawmill using the excuse that if we don't log the area, forest fires will destroy it. Scientific experts have soundly refuted the notion that logging large trees helps prevent such fires and have shown it can in fact increase fire damage. The Nunes bill would let the Forest Service log these forests with no opportunity for the state or citizens to challenge its actions. Given the history of abuse by industry and the Forest Service in this part of the Sierra Nevada, it is unacceptable to let the Forest Service police itself as this bill would allow.
The underlying problem is that the timber industry has been slow to adapt to changing uses of the land and the reduced amount of old growth forest due to overlogging. The sole timber mill that would benefit from these projects is designed to mill mostly large trees, and the Forest Service and Representative Nunes are bending over backwards to supply them, at the expense of the Giant Sequoia ecosystem. Even the mill owner has called H.R. 5760 a "short-term band-aid."
The federal government should instead appropriate funding to restore the Monument and protect the Pacific fisher by reducing the likelihood of large catastrophic fires as a result of fire suppression over many decades. This can be achieved by removing brush, using prescribed fire and in limited situations thinning small trees. Congress should not circumvent federal laws to allow the commercial logging of large, healthy trees-especially in a National Monument!
The Sierra Club will continue to take a tough stand against anything that violates the promise of protection for the Giant Sequoia ecosystem, one of the world's great natural treasures.
Photo: Sierra Club collection; all rights reserved.
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