Happy birthday, Sequoia National Park!
The first national park formed to protect a living organism
Volume 2, Number 14 - Monday, Sept. 25, 2023
Published twice a week, on Monday and Thursday
Perspective
ON THIS DATE, 133 years ago, President Benjamin Harrison signed legislation creating Sequoia National Park.
Sequoia was the nation’s second national park and was established even before there was a National Park Service. Yellowstone, established in 1872, was the first. The NPS was not established until 1916.
About a week after Sequoia National Park was established, it was expanded and given a new neighbor, General Grant National Park. On the same day, Oct. 1, 1890, President Harrison signed legislation establishing Yosemite National Park
In March 1940, General Grant National Park was abolished, and Kings Canyon National Park was established. Since 1940, the two national parks in the Sierra Nevada — both home to remarkable giant sequoia trees — have been jointly administered and are often referred to by the acronym SEKI.
I haven’t been able to track down the exact acreage of Sequoia National Park when it was established, but today, it is 404,063 acres (631 square miles). Kings Canyon National Park is 461,901 acres (722 square miles). About 93% of land in the two parks is designated wilderness, including the Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness and the John Krebs Wilderness.
A while back, I was doing research and came across an article published in The National Geographic Magazine in January 1917. In a related search, I discovered that I was able to purchase an actual copy of the magazine from that date. Pages of wonderful black-and-white photos accompany the article, and I found it most interesting.
One thing I noticed was that the magazine referred to the trees as Sequoia washingtoniana, one of their early names. (You can read more about the history of naming the trees HERE).
The point of the article was that some of the best giant sequoia land near the park — the area known as Giant Forest — wasn’t part of Sequoia National Park (prior to 1917) but was privately owned.
According to the article, sometime in 2016, the Department of the Interior “realizing that the constantly increasing value of timber had become a rapidly growing temptation to these owners to convert the trees into lumber, secured from Congress an appropriation of $50,000 to purchase the coveted land.”
However, after getting the appropriation from Congress, the price for the land reportedly went up to $70,000 because appraisers determined that the actual market value of the timber on the private land was $156,000.
The government was able to secure a six-month option, however, and the National Geographic Society raised an additional $20,000 to help the government purchase Giant Forest so it could be added to Sequoia National Park.
You can read the entire story HERE.
Inflation calculators tell us that $70,000 in 1917 had about the same value as $2 million today.
I don’t know the exact size of the land in question, but the Giant Forest Grove is about 1,880 acres.
According to a Los Angeles Times article HERE, Save the Redwoods League raised nearly $16 million to purchase 530 acres of the Alder Creek Grove of giant sequoias in 2020.
It appears that the NPS, with assistance from the National Geographic Society, got quite a bargain back in 1917.
Wildfire, water & weather update
It’s officially fall, and we have the weather to prove it! A storm is moving into California, and there may even be some snow at higher elevations of the mountains as far south as Sequoia National Park. 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 30 uncontained large fires, in addition to 20 fires being managed under a strategy other than full suppression. That’s a pretty sizeable drop.
In California, not much has changed with WatchDuty HERE, and it continues to show most of the large fire activity in the state remains still in the far north.
The Redwood Fire in Sequoia National Park was at 1,870 acres yesterday. 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 yesterday (HERE):
Fire behavior continues at low intensity, spreading within containment lines. Aerial ignitions were completed on September 19. Due to stability in the atmosphere and a lack of dispersion, smoke impacts have been pronounced in the Middle Fork drainage below the fire, including in the foothills of Sequoia National Park and the town of Three Rivers, especially early in the day. Changing weather conditions are expected to lead to better dispersion early next week. The fire is currently measured at 1,870 acres.
Performing ignitions allows firefighters to regulate the intensity of the fire as fuels are consumed. Regulating the intensity of the fire helps to ensure that there are favorable fire effects within the burned area, especially as the fire moves through giant sequoia groves.
The parks are utilizing an indirect confine-and-contain suppression strategy for the Redwood Fire.
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Giant sequoias in the news
• Sequoia National Forest is inviting public comment on the Sugarloaf Fuels Reduction Project. You can read the news release HERE.
•Sequoia National Forest plans prescribed burning above Dunlap along Highway 180 east of Fresno. You can read the news release HERE.
• Fox News has an article HERE about today’s anniversary for Sequoia National Park.
• The Mercury News has an article HERE (gift link) about the recently released Stanford study that finds that wildfire smoke is reversing years of air pollution progress in California.
• An article in EuroNews HERE discusses what it calls a “homegrown tree-planting scheme” that wants to tackle carbon offsetting’s greenwashing problem. One organization in the UK plans to plant 100,000 giant sequoias there.
• A website called AZ Animals has an article about the differences between giant sequoia trees and Ponderosa pines. I doubt any readers would have any trouble distinguishing between the two trees, but I’m including a link HERE because I thought there was something amusing in the article. Apparently, the “uses” for giant sequoia trees include being a “major tourist attraction in California.”
• An article about the Save the Sequoias Act written by two attorneys from a firm called WilmerHale has been published in several places. You can check it out HERE. And an excerpt:
At the end of the day, both the proponents and opponents of the bill generally agree that giant sequoias need additional protection from the increasing threat of devastating forest fires. The question is whether, as the environmental groups opposing the legislation believe, this particular solution would save the trees only by enabling further harm to the forest.
I would suggest that the authors didn’t spend enough time researching this topic. I haven’t read anything to make me believe that the groups opposing the Save Our Sequoias Act agree that “additional protection from the increasing threat of devastating forest fires” is needed (for the trees). Rather, they seem to believe that the forest can recover on its own if left alone. That’s a pretty important difference between opponents and proponents of the SOS Act that the authors missed.
Historic photo of the week
The photo above is of the Pioneers Cabin Tree at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. The tree fell down in 2017. It was known as one of California’s earliest tourist attractions. You can read more about it in a news release that California State Parks issued when it fell HERE.
Thanks for reading!