‘Save Our Sequoias Act’ gets a hearing
House Natural Resources Committee reviews H.R. 2989
Volume 1, Number 50 - Thursday, May 11, 2023
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Perspective
THE TEXT FOR THE LATEST version of the Save Our Sequoias Act — H.R. 2989 – was finally published on Congress.gov yesterday after a hearing on the bill was underway in the House Natural Resources Committee.
The hearing began at 10:15 a.m. in Washington, D.C., which was 7:15 a.m. in California. I had a busy day planned before I learned about the hearing, but managed to watch it twice and write news articles for the Porterville Recorder and another newspaper yesterday. The Recorder’s article is on the front page this morning, but I can’t find it online yet. I’ll let you know when the other similar article publishes.
I was on deadline for those articles, so I didn’t have enough time to do a full comparison of the current SOS Act with last year’s House and Senate versions. But a quick review revealed that the new House bill, introduced by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and 50 cosponsors, is not exactly the same as last year’s House bill.
The Hill has an article about the hearing HERE. Here’s an excerpt:
The Save Our Sequoias Act is sponsored by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and has support from both sides of the aisle. But it is dividing environmental groups, some who think it would do more harm than good.
It’s not possible for anyone to provide all of the testimony or political nuances in a single article covering a two-and-a-half-hour hearing on a complex topic. I couldn’t manage that in the articles I wrote yesterday, and I won’t manage it this morning here.
But in thinking about the hearing, I realize that as I provide more information about it, I’ll be peeling back the onion, so to speak, about all of the issues I write about here — the Big Trees, the people who love them, the science (and controversy about it), climate change, trust (or lack thereof) and politics.
I don’t know how quickly this bill might move through Congress this year — or if it will. But in upcoming editions, I’ll do my best to provide more coverage of the various elements of the hearing. In the meantime, you can watch it HERE or get more information, including the complete text, HERE.
For now, here’s an excerpt from the articles I wrote yesterday:
How a bill recently introduced by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) might prevent further loss of giant sequoia trees was explored in a hearing on Monday morning before members of the House Natural Resources Committee.
As the Speaker noted in his testimony, about 20 percent of the iconic trees have been lost in recent years, largely to wildfires.
The bill — H.R. 2989, the Save Our Sequoias Act — was introduced April 28 as a bipartisan effort with 50 cosponsors. Although it has the same title, it is not identical to a House bill introduced by McCarthy in 2022 or a Senate bill introduced later last year by Dianne Feinstein and Rudy Padilla, both Democrats from California.
There is currently is no companion bill in the Senate. Feinstein just returned to Washington Monday following a lengthy absence related to illness. Last year’s Senate bill was included in a hearing Sept. 29 with seven other forestry-related bills, but no further action was taken.
On Monday, in a hearing that lasted about two-and-a-half hours and was entirely about the Save Our Sequoias Act, members of the House Natural Resources Committee heard from the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, the chairperson of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors and vice chairperson of the Tule River Tribal Council. Other members of a panel brought together for the hearing were representatives of Save the Redwoods League and the National Parks Conservation Association.
McCarthy’s 20th Congressional District includes Giant Sequoia National Monument, Sequoia National Forest and much of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks — prime areas for giant sequoias. He said the legislation would reform forest management practices within the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service to expedite fire protection projects in those areas and other lands where the iconic trees grow.
Ranking Member Raul Grijalva, D-AZ, also testified. He is not among the cosponsors of the bill, but said he appreciated seeing “so much attention, passion and effort, to preserve native plants to protect our public lands from the worst effects of climate change.”
Grijalva said he was “genuinely encouraged” to see that the bill authorizes millions for giant sequoia protection over the next seven years. But referencing the federal debt crisis, he called attention to Speaker McCarthy’s calls for deep budget cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling for a year.
“I’m a little bit puzzled,” Grijalva said. “Under the Republican’s own House rules, any new program funded has to be offset by cutting a program or funding elsewhere. But I don't see that offset anywhere in this legislation. Democratic bills have been blocked from hearings and markups for those very same reasons. So, it is interesting to see if the Speaker’s bill here today … violates their own rules.”
Wildfire, water & weather update
I saw some bright pink clarkia blooming along Highway 58 as I traveled east from Bakersfield to my home in Tehachapi, California, yesterday. Clarkia is a wildflower I know as “farewell to spring,” and there is only a little green left on the lower foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada to the north. Temperatures in California are expected to keep rising, grass is drying out and fire season can’t be far behind.
There’s an interesting article HERE in the Record-Searchlight (Redding) about El Nino and the coming fire station. An excerpt:
"Yep, we are in the midst of the transition from La Nina, which ended in March, to El Nino, which is expected to form during the next few months. Typically, El Nino’s form late summer into the fall and don’t manifest this early during the summer," said Brent Wachter, a fire meteorologist at the Northern California Geographic Coordinating Center in Redding.
The best Sierra Nevada weather forecasts can be found at NWS Hanford, HERE, and NWS Sacramento, HERE.
Rivers are still high, and officials in the San Joaquin Valley are still preparing for The Big Melt, noting that some snow in the Sierra won’t melt this year.
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Giant sequoias in the news
• Great article in the Los Angeles Times about cultural burning and the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation near Yosemite National Park. Here’s a LINK and an excerpt:
When a wildfire swept through in July (2022), the dense vegetation stoked flames that destroyed Vasquez’s home and transformed the land into a scarred moonscape. With that, she became one of many Indigenous residents to watch her ancestral territory burn in recent years, despite knowing the outcome could have been different.
“If we were able to impart that wisdom and knowledge to European settlers, to the agencies, to not stop our burning, we would be in a way different place,” Vasquez said.
• Another supporter of the Save Our Sequoias Act, Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), published a news release about the May 10 hearing HERE.
• Not specifically about giant sequoias, but Evergreen magazine has an interview with Forest Service Chief Randy Moore HERE.
Giant sequoia around the world
I am always amazed to see the efforts people around the world will make to grow giant sequoia trees. Here’s an article about a baby tree that was believed to be the only giant sequoia growing in eastern Canada in 2017 — and the Twitter feed that provides an update. Artist Sarah Hatton’s first baby tree died in 2018, but now she is nurturing another. Here’s what she wrote when the first one died:
In a matter of a few short days, my 7-year botanical experiment ended in crushing disappointment. Even more heartbreaking is the fact that this is also happening to centuries-old mature sequoias.
Thanks for reading!
It will be interesting to see how McCarthy addresses that. There were no comments on any of the testimony.
I would be interested to know McCarthy’s response to the Democrat’s question about where the budget cuts are proposed, to offset the cost of his bill.