New petition to protect the Sequoias

[losthills]

You wouldn't think that these magestic trees should be logged, especially inside a National Monument. Congress probably wasn't thinking that either, when they created the Sequoia National Monument. But the US Forest Service, which manages the National Monument is, and has been allowing logging within the Monument borders.

My friends at Sequoia Forestkeeper have been fighting this for the last 5 years, and they feel that the only solution is to transfer management of the Monument to the National Park Service, which is not in the business of logging.

Check out the online version of their petition, and help them out with a signiture.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/14/protect-the-giant-sequoias



Thanks,
Lost Hills

[XemaSab]

1. They're not going to log the giant sequoias

They're going to log smaller trees.

[tabatha]

2. And then when the big ones die?

[XemaSab]

3. They're not a commercially valuable timber species

and they need fire to regenerate.

Removal of smaller trees will enable them to safely torch the monument without risking the bigger trees.

[losthills]

4. Safely torch the monument?

Wow, man....
Our position is, "leave the monument alone."
They don't "safely torch" the National Park, and the National Monument does not need to be "torched."
They are not logging in the monument as some sort of beneficial forest management, as you seem to imply, but for revenue. Bush appointees who run the Forest Service are actually selling out all of our National Forests, and the Sequoia National Forest is no exception.

[losthills]

6. Background Information from the Sierra Club:

Place: Giant Sequoia National Monument (California)
Threat: Logging

Commonly growing to 250 feet high and 15 feet across, giant sequoia trees are the largest living trees on Earth and -- with lifespans of 3,000 years or more -– they are some of the longest surviving organisms on Earth.

Giant Sequoia National Monument in California shelters more than half the giant sequoias in existence, in several large groves, and also provides essential habitat for the California spotted owl, Pacific fisher, and myriad other plants and animals. Hikers, campers, horseback riders, anglers, hunters, and skiers visit the Monument and are inspired by these magnificent cathedral forests.

The fight to protect the giant sequoias of California’s Sierra Nevada range began in the early 1900s with Sierra Club founder John Muir. Unfortunately, when Sequoia National Park was founded, over half the groves were left out. And in the 1980s, the Forest Service began clearcutting in those groves -- supposely to help germination of Sequoia trees! Sierra Club stopped the clearcuts and pressed for permanent protection. Finally, in 2000, the Giant Sequoia National Monument was established by President Bill Clinton, and 327,800 acres were set aside to protect this national symbol.

The Monument proclamation reads: "These forests need restoration to counteract the effects of a century of fire suppression and logging." Unfortunately, in January 2004 the Forest Service released a final Monument Management Plan that runs contrary to the spirit and intent of the Monument proclamation. The agency affirmed its decision a year later.

Instead of restoring the forests, the Bush administration policy calls for the removal of large, healthy, fire-resistant trees up to thirty inches in diameter -- even within the sequoia groves! This is more logging than would have been allowed had the area not been proclaimed a Monument.

"The federal government created Giant Sequoia National Monument to protect these rare ancient giants for all Americans," read one editorial from the Los Angeles Times. ("From Giants to Hot Tubs," January 29, 2003) "The Bush administration seems to think they have a higher purpose as decks and hot tubs."

In contrast, Sequoia National Park, adjacent to the Monument, is restoring its giant sequoia ecosystem through the careful use of prescribed fire and a conservative use of small-tree thinning that is typically used a small distance from structures to protect them from the threat of fire. Over several decades the Park Service has made considerable progress in returning a natural fire cycle to the ecosystem and increasing sequoia regeneration while avoiding harmful logging.

Says Joe Fontaine, Vice Chair of the Sierra Club's Sequoia Task Force, "There's no reason why what's working in Sequoia National Park couldn't work in Sequoia National Monument. There is a clearly better way to manage the Monument than to log the big, fire-resistant trees."

Help protect Giant Sequoia National Monument by signing our petition to President Bush.

Sierra Club Contacts:
Bill Corcoran, California: [phone]

[XemaSab]

13. Coast Redwoods are used for decks and hot tubs

Giant Sequoias are mostly used for shingles and fence posts.

Also, they're worried that fires will crown out instead of burning along the ground. These trees cannot withstand crown fires. Removing smaller trees will help protect the big trees.

[losthills]

15. You are digging yourself into a hole, Xema.

Sequoias are a marketable species, and are coveted by the timber companies who can and do clearcut them.
I agree with most of the stuff you post here, but I think you need to investigate this issue further. You could start with the Sierra Club piece that I posted here, or the Sequoia Forestkeeper website.

The Forest Service is not credible, since they have been led for the last seven years by Bush appointees. The majority of Forest Service employees are ashamed of that leadership. When todays Forest Service uses the word "thinning" they mean clearcutting.

The Forest Service is allowing commercial logging of Sequoias in the Sequoia National Monument. It is not beneficial to the forest, and it needs to stop.

[XemaSab]

18. The Sierra Club exists to make the Sierra Club money

and they are misrepresenting what's going on here.

It's that simple.

[losthills]

19. I didn't know you are an anti-environmentalist.

I'm glad that I found that out.

You don't understand this issue, and you have posted bogus information.

The Sierra Club is real people. They do not exist to make money. They exist to protect our natural resources from those who would ruin them for money, including our own government. The Sierra Club is not misrepresenting the facts.

If you can prove that anything in the Sierra Club article that I posted is not factual, please try to do so. I live in the Sequoia National Forest, I am an inholder, I know what is going on here, and I am a member of the Sierra Club. If you want to stick up for the Bush Administration, Democratic Underground may not be your best venue.

[XemaSab]

20. Where did I post bogus information?

How do I not understand this issue?

How am I sticking up for the Bush administration?

Here's the deal: I have a special hatred for knee-jerk "environmentalists" who get all weepy about supposed crimes against the Earth and who think they're super-enlightened when really they're just idiots who don't have all the facts.

I think the Sierra Club is totally infested with these types. I also think that the Sierra Club spends WAY too much money on administrative overhead, fundraising, and hippie feel-good nonsense, and not enough money on ACTUALLY protecting the environment. As far as real advocacy goes, they're pretty limp-dicked. Their corporate partnerships are just plain weak, and basically it's a group that's afraid to take a stand against the REAL powers trashing our environment. Basically they exist to help Subaru-driving yuppies in the Bay Area feel good about themselves.

[NNadir]

7. Why am I not surprised that you know zero biology?

Without fire, the sequoia does not exist.

Got it?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

There are many forests on this continent where fire suppression has resulted in enormous instability.

If it's any consolation to you though, you might take great pride in the fact that by opposing the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy and by working hard to change the water and heat flows on a continental scale, ignorance cults have created conditions under which they will have far fewer forests to misunderstand.

Brazillions of pine beetles all over North America pray each night to thank you for your efforts to make their lives long and filled with fat.

[losthills]

10. Hello, my friend.

I am not against fire in the forest. This petition is not against natural fire or even prescribed burning. This petition is against commercial logging. I am sure you can recognize the difference.
I do know Biology, my friend. That is actually my field of study.

[tabatha]

5. What utter nonsense.

Bigger trees will eventually die, and they need to be replaced smaller trees that are growing until they reach maturity.

Read the latest issue of Fremontia - fire is not needed for regeneration - in fact there should be no torching at all.

And you have contradicted yourself:

the fact that there are smaller trees means that they have been able to regenerate and don't need torching to regenerate.

And finally, how the hell did nature manage before man came of the scene - answer: a thousand, million times better.

[ben_meyers]

8. They do need fire

Episodic surface fires have swept through giant sequoia groves for many centuries. Nearly all of the largest and
oldest sequoias have huge basal fire scars that bear witness to these ancient flames. Although park naturalists
have 1ong accepted that fire was a frequent visitor to sequoia groves before arrival of Anglo-American settlers
around 1850, real concern about negative effects of suppressed natural fire regimes did not arise until the early
1960s. Ecologists noticed that there were few sequoia seedlings or saplings within the groves, while the density
of other shade-tolerant tree species was increasing. Research suggested that elimination of episodic fires during
the past century had also eliminated necessary conditions for sequoia regeneration; sequoia seeds germinate and
establish best in mineral soils exposed by surface burns (Harvey et al. 1980). Concern about changes in the
structure of sequoia-mixed conifer forests was an important stimulus to reintroducing fire to some groves as
early as 1968. Many prescribed burn areas within the groves now have abundant sequoia seedlings and saplings.
http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~tswetnam/tws-pdf/Yosemite.pdf

[losthills]

11. All forests need fire.

They do not need logging.

[malakai2]

12. They currently need thinning, not logging

Where thinning is removal of doghair stands, smaller diameter saplings, and potential ladder fuels that, were fire just plainly run through the area, would scorch or consume crowns and kill mature trees. Problem is, thinning in that sense isn't economically viable because those materials aren't merchantable. They need to be either piled and burned, chipped and spread, or scattered loosely enough as debris that they don't contribute significantly to extra soil heating in the next ground fire. Logging, on the other hand, would be what commercial outfits do when they go in, identify anything that can be taken as saw timber, and take it without much regard for watershed protection, seral stage regeneration, and the ecological value of standing dead and live timber. It's just a semantic game to them. Sorta like how they'll describe large, mature trees as "decadent," meaning trees that will scale a lot of board feet and, despite their immense ecological value, therefore cannot be left standing.

On edit: The reason the thinning is even necessary is twofold. First, a century of active fire exclusion by white settlers and their descendants has led to an accumulation of fuels in many forest types that would be sufficient to cause crown scorch and torch if the fuels are not first mechanically reduced. This isn't much of an issue in black spruce or jack pine forests, where stand replacing fire is the norm anyway, but it is a huge deal in forest types where fires were either mixed severity or low intensity ground fires, such as in ponderosa pine or sequoia forests. Second, because a couple centuries of ridiculous overharvest of mature forest types-4A, 4b, 4c, and 5, in Forest Service management lingo-the relatively small acreage that remains of these types (relative to historic condition) is the last refuge of several listed species, and cannot be allowed to crown scorch or torch without great risk of losing the listed critters.

[tabatha]

16. This has been debunked.

Read the latest issue of Fremontia.

Also try this book -

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Californias-Ecosystems-Neil-Sugihara/dp/0520246055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207286764&sr=8-1

I have attended a number of talks by experts with the latest research - and fire is NOT necessary.

[losthills]

9. Thanks.

Yes, they do commercially log the giant Sequoias. That's why the monument was created-- to protect the last unlogged groves outside the park. The Bush Administration uses double speak-- they use the term "thinning" to describe checkerboard clearcutting, "fire management" to describe commercial logging, and "small trees" means trees up to 3 feet in diameter and 250 years old.

Sequoia groves in the National Park are managed just fine wiyhout any logging at all. That is the model that needs to be applied to the National Monument.

[XemaSab]

14. A lot of the smaller trees are other species

And a 30 inch dbh tree may have germinated before European settlers got here.

[tabatha]

17. See #16.