About those wolves...
Groups call for 'pause' on Sequoia National Forest projects
Volume 2, Number 10 - Monday, Sept. 11, 2023
Published twice a week, on Monday and Thursday
Perspective
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, those wolves are going to complicate things.
On Aug. 14 HERE, I shared that a new gray wolf pack has been confirmed in Tulare County and on Sequoia National Forest.
The Los Angeles Times on Aug. 30 reported that “a group of environmentalists urged the U.S. Forest Service to suspend post-fire logging operations in the region until it can “determine whether any activities associated with those and other projects could adversely affect the wolves.” (Read the LA Times article HERE).
I wasn’t immediately able to track down the letter referenced by Louis Sahagun in the Times article, but attorney René Voss sent it to me last Friday.
The letter, dated Aug. 15, was on behalf of four organizations that have a long history of activism related to giant sequoia issues — the Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Sequoia Taskforce of the Sierra Club, the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and Sequoia ForestKeeper.
Sent just one day after the California Department of Fish and Wildlife released news of the wolf pack, the letter states that the new information “implicates ongoing actions the Forest Service is currently implementing, including the Region 5 Post-Disturbance Hazardous Tree Management Project and the Emergency Response, R5 Giant Sequoia Fuels Grove Reduction and Restoration Projects.
“The Forest Service should place a pause on those actions and, in consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, determine whether any activities associated with those projects and others could adversely affect the wolves.”
In the letter, Voss also calls attention to future projects that may be impacted by the reported presence of the wolves, including the Castle Fire Ecological Restoration Project and the Windy Fire Ecological Restoration Project.
According to a report HERE from the National Park Service, lightning started the Castle Fire on Aug. 19, 2020, in a remote area of Sequoia National Forest, southeast of Sequoia National Park. By the time the fire was contained in December, it had burned 171,000 acres, including over 9,530 acres of giant sequoia groves on Forest Service, NPS, state, Tulare County and private lands.
The Castle Fire, according to the NPS, killed an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias (those with trunk diameters of 4 feet or more, or >1.2 meters). This is 31 to 42 percent of large sequoias within the Castle Fire — or 10 to 14 percent of all large sequoias across the tree's natural range in the Sierra Nevada.
A year later, also according to the NPS, lightning on Sept. 9, 2021, started the Windy Fire, located south of Sequoia National Park in Sequoia National Forest and on the Tule River Reservation. It burned 97,528 acres by a containment date of Nov. 15, 2021. Scientists estimate that in the Windy Fire, 931 to 1,257 large sequoias were killed or were expected to die in the next 3-5 years.
Voss noted that the Forest Service has already completed NEPA review for the Castle and Windy fire ecological restoration projects (meaning studies required by the National Environmental Policy Act), but noted that the biological and environmental assessments “have not considered or assessed the effects from management activities on gray wolves.
“While, of course this is not the fault of the Forest Service, NEPA now requires the Forest Service to take a step back and make sure those analyses are conducted and that ESA (Endangered Species Act) consultation is completed before it issues final decisions for these projects,” Voss wrote.
He added that “cumulatively, other actions may also need to consider the effects on these wolves, such as the French Fire Restoration Project to the south in the Greenhorn Mountains in the Kern River Ranger District.”
I reached out to Sequoia National Forest officials again last week and learned that a response to the letter from Voss is expected to be released soon.
I also reached out to CDFW because I wondered if that agency has concerned about how forest management activities might impact the wolves — not just on Sequoia National Forest, but also activities of Save the Redwoods League, the Tule River Reservation, CalFire and Tulare County (both with land in the Mountain Home giant sequoia grove).
I’m hoping to be able to report more on Thursday.
What was clear to me the moment I heard about the wolves was that they would complicate the situation in an area that’s been subject to extraordinary situations the past few years.
High-severity wildfires in 2020 and 2021, followed by months of planning and an emergency action aimed at giant sequoia restoration in 2022, followed by historic snowfall and flooding that destroyed infrastructure — and most recently, the discovery of the presence of an endangered species, wolves, and even a rare tropical storm.
In case you think I’m laying out the plot points of a feature film, this is actually what’s been happening over the last few years in one of the areas that has also been home to giant sequoias for a few thousand years.
Stay tuned!
Here’s the letter:
New district ranger for Western Divide
Chris Sanders is the new district ranger overseeing the Western Divide Ranger District, according to Sequoia National Forest Supervisor Teresa Benson.
Sanders is taking over at a very interesting time, as just about all of the activity I described in the section above about the wolves is on that district.
Fortunately, he’s no stranger to the challenging Western Divide District, formerly known as the Tule River-Hot Springs District. I remember talking with him several times during the time I published the Southern Sierra Messenger in Springville.
“Chris brings a wealth of practical field and leadership experience that will serve the district employees and surrounding communities well,” Benson said in a news release. “The Western Divide District Ranger position is essential to achieving many of the goals and management of the southern section of the Giant Sequoia National Monument.”
Sanders is a local Californian, born and raised in Lindsay. He began working for the Sequoia National Forest after graduating from California State University, Bakersfield, with a degree in biology in 1993. During his 30-year career, he served as a biological technician, wildlife biologist/range manager position, district planner, and district recreation officer in the Western Divide Ranger District.
In 2018, he moved to the Forest Supervisor’s Office as the assistant forest recreation officer and the forest wildlife/fisheries program manager. Most recently, he served as the acting district ranger for the Western Divide Ranger District.
Beginning this month, Sanders will oversee the management of range, resources, vegetation, wildlife, recreation, and fire management within the Giant Sequoia National Monument.
According to the news release, Sanders is excited to return to the Western Divide Ranger District as the new district ranger. When not working, he enjoys fishing, hunting, and utility terrain vehicle rides with family and friends.
Sanders replaces former District Ranger Eric LaPrice, who accepted a position with the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia earlier this year.
Wildfire, water & weather update
We’re nearly two weeks away from the official beginning of fall, but the weather is already starting to feel fall-like. Of course, this is California, and that doesn’t mean much because the weather could turn hot as blazes before winter eventually arrives.
Still, there are no weather watches, warnings or advisories in the Sierra Nevada this morning, with pretty nice weather in the forecast. The best Sierra Nevada weather forecasts can be found at NWS Hanford, HERE, and NWS Sacramento, HERE.
Wildfire update: Here’s the federal Situation Report for today. Across the country this morning, there are 55 uncontained large fires, in addition to 32 fires being managed under a strategy other than full suppression, about the same as last Thursday.
In California, not much has changed with WatchDuty HERE, and it shows most of the large fire activity in the state remains still in the north, with the exception of the Redwood Fire in Sequoia National Park. That fire was at 299 acres yesterday, according to Inciweb. As reported previously, officials are managing the fire with a “confine and contain” strategy and expect it will grow to about 3,000 acres.
From the latest Inciweb report about the Redwood Fire (HERE):
A combination of aerial and hand ignitions is planned to begin on Wednesday, Sep 13, and continue for about 7 days. Fire size is expected to increase to about 1500 acres throughout this time. This will allow firefighters to regulate the intensity of the fire as fuels are consumed. Regulating the intensity of the fire will help to ensure that there are favorable fire effects within the burned area, especially as the fire moves through giant sequoia groves.
CalFire’s incident page this morning shows 5,280 wildfires this season, with 255,468 acres burned, which is less than the 257,220 acres I reported on Thursday, suggesting some adjustments were made. There have been four fatalities this fire season — one civilian and three firefighters. Nine structures have been damaged, and 33 have been destroyed.
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Giant sequoias in the news
• Did you know there’s a federal courthouse in Yosemite National Park? I didn’t, and I found the story HERE very interesting. It’s one of only two federal courthouses located in America’s national parks (the other is in Yellowstone). The magistrate judges are required to live inside the parks. No crimes agains giant sequoias were mentioned, but the story is fascinating.
• The Hanford Sentinel HERE has an article about the Redwood Fire burning in Sequoia National Park.
• The Bakersfield Californian has an article HERE about the wolves discovered on Sequoia National Forest and concerns of ranchers in the area.
Historic photo of the week
This 1929 photo in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park is recorded in NPS Archives as “Historic Individuals, Thunderbird Chief from Cheyenne Wyoming at Sherman Tree, with Col. John R. White,” but with no additional information.
I was curious, so I did a little searching, and I think the Thunderbird Chief pictured here was the actor Richard Davis (more below).
Col. White, on the right, is described by authors Lary M. Dilsaver and William C. Tweed in “Challenge of the Big Trees,” as “a man with experience (at Sequoia National Park) ranging from the early days of Stephen Mather through to the Depression and its drastic government changes.” You can read more about White HERE.
I often wish that there was more information published with archive photos, but I also understand that research takes time.
From my research, it appears that the “Thunderbird Chief” pictured here was Native American actor Richard Davis. I found a photo of him in similar regalia HERE. And more information about him HERE and HERE. From Wikipedia: Richard Davis Thunderbird (August 6, 1866 – April 6, 1946) was a Native American actor of Cheyenne descent known as Chief Thunderbird.
Thanks for reading!
It is a delicate balance. Needs a lot of thought as to how best care for the trees and the wolves.
Fires are always devastating and the Castle Fire destroyed several small mountain communities including Sequoia Crest, Alpine Village, and Cedar Slope in about two days…. What was hard to comprehend is that the fire sat down in the Kern Canyon for a month and little was done to extinguish the fire completely…. Even more amazing to me is that the Belknap and McIintyre Sequoia groves were left completely unprotected and sustained major losses…. If you walked down there today you would be horrified at the sight…. If cutting hundreds of trees down and piling them up then leaving them unburned to rot in hundreds of piles around the Sequoia groves someone’s idea of restoration, I say we need to find someone else to manage the forest, maybe a nonprofit…. When I was there last summer they were indiscriminately dropping trees amidst thousands of Sequoia seedlings trampling through the areas without any regard to the destruction they were causing…. When I pointed to the trees and asked the cutters what they were doing they said “What seedlings?” Then the boss came by and said they wanted to bring bulldozers in to drop all the trees around the grove. True story! Don’t look to the forest service to restore, manage, or steward anything in our precious monument…. I have pictures of everything, so no excuses please! Just as a side note, there has been no work done one our trails either for years to decades…. I can’t imagine anyone giving USFS the privilege of managing the wolves or any other animals in our mountains! They won’t even help us in Camp Nelson with the hundreds of bear break-ins this summer destroying many cabins in our community! 🤯