Tehipite Chapter

Join us online Thursday, December 14, at 7 PM for our last meeting of 2023, when we'll be joined by forest ecologist Dr. Chad Hansen who will present current scientific findings regarding:

"Giant Sequoia regeneration after recent fires in the Sierra Nevada"

We will be meeting via Zoom. Click here to register now. The Zoom link to the meeting will be sent to your email address the afternoon of the meeting.

The Sierra Club is a national, member-supported environmental organization, which seeks to influence public policy in both Washington and the state capitals through public education and grass-roots political action.

The Tehipite Chapter Mission Statement:

To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth;
To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources;
To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environments.

Join us online Thursday, December 14 at 7:00 pm, for our last general meeting of 2023.

Forest ecologist Dr. Chad Hansen will present current scientific findings regarding:

"Giant Sequoia Regeneration after Recent Fires in the Sierra Nevada"

Advance registration is required to attend this meeting. Click here to register now and you will receive the Zoom link on the day of the presentation.

According to Dr. Hansen, the public has been told repeatedly by public land agencies, the media, and some politicians that recent lightning-ignited wildfires are a major threat to iconic Giant Sequoia groves, that 20% of all mature sequoias have been killed in recent fires, and that Sequoias cannot regenerate in larger high-intensity fire patches. These claims are being used to justify destructive logging and artificial planting projects in Giant Sequoia groves. Such claims are also used to advance a dangerous logging bill, deceptively named the "Save Our Sequoias Act", that would roll back all major environmental laws to allow lawless logging in all Giant Sequoia groves, even in national parks and Wilderness Areas. Meanwhile the public and the press are being kept out of these groves by "closure orders" issued by land agencies.

Dr. Chad Hanson, forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project (and a national Board member of the Sierra Club), will present current scientific evidence and explain why these claims are misinformation, and how the truth is quite the opposite from what we are being told. For example, we are now seeing Giant Sequoia reproduction the likes of which no human has witnessed since the late 1800s, prior to wildfire suppression policies.

Numerous sequoia seedlings are thriving in parts of the groves that were hit hardest by intense fire.

This photo was taken by Bryant Baker at Nelder Grove in June of 2023.

Dr. Chad Hanson is a forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, and is the author of the book, Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate. Dr. Hanson is based in Kennedy Meadows, on the east side of the southern Sierra Nevada.

Learn more on December 14 at 7 PM by registering NOW in order to receive the Zoom link in your mailbox that afternoon. Click here to register now.

Email Karen Hammer at ecuagirl45@yahoo.com if you have any questions or suggestions for future programs.