Volume 2, Number 3 - Thursday, August 17, 2023
Published twice a week, on Monday and Thursday
This week’s spotlight
By Rick Elkins
For Giant Sequoia News
AS DISHEARTENING as it is to see miles and miles of burned forests, it is catastrophic to see thousands of year-old Giant Sequoias burned to death.
Ron Cerruti and Chris Conrad, longtime foresters and members of Camp 70, a group of the University of California at Berkeley graduates of forestry, recently visited several groves in Sequoia National Forest. While the visit wasn’t their first to the forest following devastating fires in 2020 and 2021, the heartache of seeing Giant Sequoias destroyed in those fires was just as severe.
Camp 70 is named after the UC Berkeley Summer Forest Camp and the alumni of that 1970 class. It was formed in 2021 after the destructive Dixie Fire consumed 960,000 acres. Members felt then, as they do today, that something needs to be done to protect forests, especially the majestic giant sequoias in the Central Sierra Nevada.
“These aren’t just big trees, they are national treasures,” said Cerruti as he surveyed the Long Meadow Grove, home to the Trail of 100 Giants and part of Giant Sequoia National Monument.
In that grove stood burned and dead – or dying – giant sequoias. Many were more than 1,500 years old, and some with a diameter of more than 12 feet.
The trees were killed in the 2021 Windy Fire, which burned along the Great Western Divide Highway and followed the 2020 Castle Fire, which burned from Ponderosa to Three Rivers. Those two fires combined killed thousands of large giant sequoia trees and more than 270,000 acres of forest.
According to the United States Forest Service, 31 of 36 groves saw fires that burned at extremely high intensity. While giant sequoias are resistant to fires, high-intensity fire which gets into the crowns of the giant monarchs are deadly.
Officials have estimated as many as 14,000 giant sequoias have been lost, about 20 percent of all the large trees.
Evidence of that is seen where workers are removing dead trees and non-sequoia trees. The dead giant trees are not being cut. Those charred monarchs will stand for decades as a stark reminder of what fire can do if the groves are not managed.
What was seen at the Long Meadow grove can be found at nearly every grove which experienced intense fire.
“You think how many thousands of years these trees survived, and in one fell swoop, they were gone,” said Brian Rueger, forester for the Tule River Tribe. He and forester Jeff Gletne hosted Cerruti and Conrad on their tour.
What brought the two proponents of managing the groves to Sequoia National Forest was the restoration work that is being done in a number of groves, like at Long Meadow.
Workers are cleaning up the damage and replanting new trees. Some 80,000 seedlings have been planted already, not all sequoia seedlings. While there is some natural regeneration taking place, in many areas, the fire was so severe it scorched the soil to a point that there is nothing left to sustain a seedling.
“It’s good to see the Forest Service is doing something,” said Cerruti. “This ought to be done in every grove,” added Conrad, not just those that burned. Both men said the work needs to continue for years to prevent the groves from again being overtaken by non-sequoias.
Ben Blom, director of stewardship and restoration for Save the Redwoods League, said the Forest Service has partnered with the League, Great Basin Institute and American Forests to put together the projects.
“These groves are in an unnatural state and in need of active management,” said Blom, adding the work is to set the stage for the use of healthy fires to keep them clean for decades. “Everything we do is based on science,” he noted.
Camp 70 has put out a position paper calling on more forest management. (Read it HERE) Camp 70 is a group of approximately 30 UC Berkeley forestry graduates, but Cerruti and Conrad would like to see more people get involved. They have visited ten burned-over and largely destroyed groves since June 2022.
The two said they support the Save Our Sequoias Act in Congress. The bill proposes ways to expedite efforts to protect groves and has bipartisan support. However, a multitude of environmental groups have come out against the act.
Conrad wasn’t surprised by that.
“It was the Sierra Club’s (and many other so-called environmental groups) efforts that began in the mid-1980s that shut down the vegetation management that was capable of protecting the groves. Appeals and lawsuits continued to be filed against forest service fuel reduction efforts even after creation of the Giant Sequoia Monument, which still would have allowed for some fuels work in grove areas,” he said.
“You cannot safely reintroduce fire into the big tree groves without substantial fuel treatment ahead of prescribed fire. We’ve known that in forestry for the last 60-70 years. What has happened in the groves from these last big fires needs to be labeled for what it is: environmental foolishness.”
Conrad continued, “A strong case can be made that more giant sequoias have been killed by the fuels-driven mega-fires of the 2020 and 2021 fire seasons than were ever killed by all the unwise logging that ever took place of the giant sequoia groves prior to that. This is a shameful legacy for the so-called ‘environmental’ groups who worked hard to hand-cuff realistic fuels management in the groves over the last 30-plus years.”
Cerruti said education is key. “Most of the public doesn’t have a clue what’s happening in the forest,” he said.
Camp 70 has listed eight actions it feels are necessary to restore the health of all forests, including more cooperation between state, federal and local authorities and more efforts to work in the groves to restore them to their more natural state.
Cerruti and Conrad have both worked in forestry for most of their adult lives. They are outraged by the destruction being seen in the forests they love.
“I want my grandkids and great-grandkids to see these trees,” said Cerruti.
RICK ELKINS is a journalist and former newspaper editor in Central California. He covered issues related to giant sequoias off and on for about 40 years, including the visit by President George H.W. Bush to sign a presidential proclamation protecting the trees in 1992.
Thanks to paid subscribers
I was disappointed when I learned that my recent vacation would be at the same time the Camp 70 folks would be visiting Sequoia National Forest. Thanks to this newsletter’s paid subscribers, I was able to help support Rick Elkins in meeting with the visitors and writing the report above. Journalists, you may know, generally aren’t paid much for our efforts, but those of you who pay to receive Giant Sequoia News help support my access to publications that require paid access and occasional assistance. Thanks, also, to Rick for agreeing to take on this story.
Wildfire, water & weather update
In Central California, you don’t expect to find an excessive rainfall warning in August. But that’s exactly what I found this morning with the warning for the Sierra Nevada from south and east of Yosemite all the way down to include where I live in Tehachapi. Actually, the unusual rainfall will be coming from the south, according to the National Weather Service, from Hurricane Hilary. The warning is for Sunday and Monday and is accompanied by high temperatures in the San Joaquin Valley. 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 35 uncontained large fires, in addition to 61 fires being managed under a strategy other than full suppression. You can view the California map HERE (incidents load slowly). CalFire’s incident page this morning shows 4,337 wildfires this season, with 114,562 acres burned. There have been a number of small fires in the vicinity of giant sequoia country, but so far, they’ve been stopped quickly.
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Giant sequoias in the news
• I’ll write more about this next week, but for starters, HERE you can watch a video of a field hearing held at Yosemite National Park last week by the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee. You can read about it HERE.
• The Department of Fish and Wildlife’s report last week that a pack of wolves has been found living somewhere on Sequoia National Forest has been well-publicized, although exactly where wasn’t revealed. From what information was provided, it seemed clear to me that the wolves must be living in the same area of the national forest where giant sequoias grow. One reader of this newsletter, who owns property at Sequoia Crest, told me spoke to the woman who reported the wolf sightings and they were somewhere up Highway 190. And I noted that the Tule River Tribal Police, preparing for the recent Elders Gathering on the Tule River Reservation advised tribal members to “be aware there has been bear and wolf sighting in the area.”
• The Fresno Bee published an editorial HERE saying that ranchers will have to accept the wolves. The editorial quoted an email from John Hammon, president of the Tulare County Cattlemen’s Association, saying “Wolves in Northern California have killed or maimed dozens of cows and calves in recent years, and likely many more that have gone unreported. “Wolf presence also stresses cows, impacting weight gain and even causing cows to abort their calves. We urge CDFW to collar these wolves as soon as possible and help ranchers avoid wolf conflicts before this pack gets in the habit of relying on livestock for their meals.”
• Dead trees in California, including giant sequoias and Joshua trees (which are actually succulents), is the topic of a report from the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 15. You can read it HERE but unfortunately, The Times doesn’t provide gift links. Here’s an excerpt:
…an estimated 36.3 million dead trees were counted across California in 2022 — a notable increase from the 9.5 million dead trees counted the year before, according to a report from the U.S. Forest Service.
The dramatic die-offs were largely attributed to drought, disease and insects such as bark beetles, which prey on weakened trees. Douglas firs showed the biggest mortality rate increase, 1,650%, followed by white and red firs.
Much, but not all, of the article focused on climate impacts, here’s another excerpt:
But climate change isn’t the only driver of tree death in California, said Tompkins, of the UC Cooperative Extension. The density of forests is also making them more prone to burn, as decades of forest management policies allowed for a buildup of vegetation that can act as fuel for fires.
Drought, too, is a recurring cycle in the state, and significant mortality events have historically occurred on a somewhat periodic basis, including during the drought of 2012 to 2016.
But “what’s concerning is the intensity and scale of mortality is growing,” Tompkins said. He noted that the increasing loss of trees can have cascading impacts, including the loss of of wildlife habitats for protected species.
Tree mortality may also affect the state’s carbon reduction goals since trees help store and capture carbon, he said. The state’s water supply is also connected to its forests, and the loss of tree cover could alter stream flows, affect water quality and have other negative implications.
Giant sequoia around the world
GroundReport, a digital news platform with a focus on India, reported HERE about what it calls “Asia’s lone redwood tree, ‘Sequoiadendron giganteum.’” The article appears to have been inspired by an earlier article published by Asian Mail last December (HERE).
Both articles claim that the tree growing in the Kashmir Valley is a mystery.
The Kashmir Valley in the Himalayas and part of the larger Kashmir region. The area has been the subject of a dispute between Pakistan and India since 1947, and between China and India since 1962. The valley has an average elevation of 6,070 feet above sea level, with surrounding mountains rising to 16,000 feet.
The Indian Forester published an article about the tree, believed to be about 150 years old, in 2011, but so far, I haven’t been able to access the paper to learn more.
Thanks for reading!