Cover
story
Sequoias face loosened logging regulations
By RICH HEFFERN
The earth’s largest life forms are the sequoia trees that
grow on the lush western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada range. One of
these famous cinnamon-colored giants, the “General Sherman,” was
already a few hundred years old when Jesus walked the earth. The bark on these
trees grows three feet thick. Some stand higher than the Statue of Liberty.
Some are now in danger of being cut down.
For years Sierra Club activists fought to protect the giant
sequoia ecosystem from logging and road building in the national forest and
park that had been set aside for it. The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by
conservationist John Muir in order to protect California’s wild lands and
valuable, revered resources, like Yosemite Valley and the sequoia groves.
In 1853 the first sequoia, standing in the Calaveras Grove, was
cut down. It took five loggers working for 22 days. The stump was planed and
used for a dance floor, a bar and a bowling alley. Even in those early
gold-rush days many Californians were outraged.
In 1965, a sequoia in the North Grove, weakened by heavy winds,
toppled over and fell to the earth. Nearby residents thought an earthquake had
struck. The earth shook because the tree weighed about 2,600 tons, as much as a
small ocean-going freighter or 18 blue whales -- the largest animals in the
world.
In 2000, then President Clinton stood beneath one of the giants
and signed a proclamation creating Giant Sequoia National Monument, carving it
out of Sequoia National Forest. The Monument would protect 34 groves of the
majestic trees -- half of the remaining stands -- and 300,000 surrounding
acres.
Clinton’s proclamation assigned the management of the
monument to the U.S. Forest Service and charged the agency with developing a
management plan with strict restrictions on logging. Clinton’s intention
was to preserve the groves forever.
In December 2002, the Forest Service released a proposal for
managing the monument that puts logging back into the planning. The management
blueprint, according to Los Angeles Times reporter Bettina Boxall,
“would allow, in the name of reduced fire risk, the cutting of enough
commercial timber to fill 3,000 logging trucks a year.”
After studying six alternatives, the Forest Service, in a draft
environmental impact statement, is recommending thinning out trees up to 30
inches in diameter, bigger than federal rules allow elsewhere in the
Sierras.
Last summer a catastrophic, 150,000-acre wildfire burned for weeks
in the area, coming within a half mile of one of the sequoia groves.
Conservationists agree the fire risks need to be addressed. They
claim, though, that by allowing so much logging, the federal agency would be
thumbing its nose at the spirit of the monument charter, which prohibits
removal of trees unless “clearly needed for ecological restoration and
maintenance or public safety.”
“The Forest Service has made a mockery of the proclamation
that established the monument,” said Jay Watson, the Wilderness
Society’s regional director. “It’s as if it doesn’t even
exist. I find that not only astonishing, but pretty darn arrogant.”
As it moves to reverse Clinton-era policies, the Bush
administration has been arguing that cutting trees reduces forest fire danger.
Conservationists point out that the federal government’s own scientists
have consistently reported in study after study that removal of large trees
increases fire risks by removing the most fire-resistant elements, the big
trees themselves, from the forest and by reducing the cooling shade of the
forest’s canopy. The logging of mature trees also causes flammable brush
to grow more quickly.
The monument is home to a giant sequoia tree named for George
Bush, the elder. Bush made a campaign stop a decade ago and a proclamation to
protect the giant sequoias. “At least he felt like he had to make a
gesture,” said Bill Corcoran, the Sierra Club’s Southern California
regional representative. “His son’s administration seems to have
foregone even that.”
Art Gaffrey, supervisor of both the sequoia monument and the
nearby national forest, said the proposed timber cutting is needed to groom the
forest and improve it. “No longer do we manage this public land based on
market demands,” he said. The future goal will be “to maintain forest
health and protect objects of interest from wildfire.”
Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project, a
California forest conservation group, told NCR: “What’s really
disturbing about this proposal is the limit on public input. This is an
international treasure. These trees belong to the whole country, and the Forest
Service is only allowing limited public hearings in Southern California.
It’s a complete U-turn in how the federal government administers the
public forests. During the Clinton administration there were two years of
widespread public hearings on forest policies. The Bush administration, it
seems, is shamelessly bent on turning over all our trees to the timber
industry.”
Logging in the sequoia monument will benefit the giant lumber mill
in Porterville, Calif., the nearest big town, according to Hanson. “It
won’t create more jobs because the industry now is so automated. There
will be logging roads winding through the sequoia groves and acres of
devastation for tourists to contemplate.”
Hanson continued: “That the Bush administration would target
such a revered refuge for logging raises a serious question: If the Giant
Sequoia National Monument isn’t safe under this administration, what is?
What comes next? The pines on the north rim of the Grand Canyon? The timbered
slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains?”
The Clinton document cited the grandeur of the sequoias, these
most massive trees on the planet, as a spiritual resource for the nation.
California’s pioneer environmentalist John Muir wrote:
“The Big Tree is nature’s finest masterpiece … the greatest of
all living things, it belongs to an ancient stock and has a strange air of
another day about it, a thoroughbred look inherited from long ago -- the auld
lang syne of trees.”
California’s environmentalists are worried that some of these
masterpieces may soon be turned into picnic tables or paneling for recreation
rooms.
National Catholic Reporter, March 14,
2003
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