Sequoia National Forest moves on
A legal settlement was part of governance for nearly 33 years
Volume 1, Number 54 - Thursday, June 1, 2023
Now twice a week — Monday and Thursday!
Perspective
OVERBOOKED. That describes my life right now, and briefly, during my grandson’s graduation from high school last night, I remembered that I needed to write this newsletter this morning.
Originally, I intended to write about a planned trip to Sequoia National Park via the Sequoia Shuttle that was scheduled for last week, but road conditions there don’t allow the shuttle to make the trip to Giant Forest.
I had a great interview on Tuesday with Jim Hamerly who grows giant sequoia trees on Mt. Palomar in San Diego County, but I need more time to try to do a good job of writing that story.
A few other topics were swirling in my mind — there is so much to say about the Big Trees and the issues that surround them — but I walked into my office early this morning without a clear idea of what I would write about and — not having had my coffee yet — I bumped against a bookshelf and the book you see above landed at my feet, and I knew instantly that this book would be my topic today.
I was living in Porterville, California, in early 2000 when a friend who enjoyed four-wheeling with her family in the nearby mountains told me that President Bill Clinton was expected to create a new national monument nearby.
I remember that she told me “the ink was barely dry” on an agreement between environmentalists and others, including recreation groups, whereby they agreed on rules for roads and trails and the new monument proclamation was expected to shut four-wheelers out of the forest.
That conversation was my introduction to some of the issues related to the management of Sequoia National Forest, and I wanted to learn more.
I had just started writing for the Fresno Bee’s south valley edition (long gone now) and started following what was being reported about efforts to create Giant Sequoia National Monument.
I was a freelancer, and staff reporters covered the big issues, so I wasn’t covering the creation of the Monument. But I started going into the mountains looking for story ideas and found there were lots of stories about giant sequoias, the people who love them and the conflicts that inevitably develop from differences of opinion. Eventually, I started a weekly newspaper as a way to cover those issues. That was like pushing a boulder uphill for nearly 10 years.
One thing I wondered — what was the agreement my friend had referred to, the one on which “the ink was barely dry” when the Monument was created?
Eventually, I learned it was a settlement addressing disagreement over Sequoia National Forest’s 1988 Land Management Plan, sometimes called a Forest Plan. The “Mediated Settlement Agreement” — or MSA — was achieved in July 1990. That was nearly 10 years before the GSNM was created in April 2000, so saying that the ink was barely dry was an exaggeration. But I learned that the MSA loomed large in that part of the world, and interestingly, it only recently has it become entirely defunct.
The MSA came about because there were numerous appeals to the February 1988 adoption of the Forest Plan for Sequoia National Forest. That fall, the Forest Service entered into an agreement with the California Department of Fish and Game to settle its appeal and — long story short — eventually agreed with the various appellants to attempt mediation instead of litigation to settle the issues.
The effort began in March 1989 and concluded in June 1990, with the parties spending many days in face-to-face discussion and negotiation over issues raised in the appeals — and additional hours developing and discussing proposed solutions to identified problems.
It’s not easy to sum up such an effort, but I’ll try. At the time, efforts to manage Sequoia National Forest were based upon the agency’s multiple-use concept — meaning there were many allowed activities, including grazing, logging and motor vehicle use on trails. The 1988 Forest Plan made some changes to the rules for those activities and apparently, no one liked those changes, but for different reasons.
Environmental organizations thought some new rules (in the 1988 Forest Plan) weren’t strict enough and others — recreational groups and the logging industry, as examples — thought they were too strict. Others, including the Tule River Tribe, had concerns about forest management in general and especially the risk of wildfire. And some had a concern that continued reduction in logging would have a negative impact on the local economy and also overload the forest with fuel.
Eventually, the parties made their peace, at least officially. In July 1990, the settlement was reached. Parties to the agreement, in addition to the Forest Service and the state of California, included the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, attorneys for the Sierra Club, Southwest Council Federation of Flyfishers, The Wilderness Society and Natural Resources Defense Council; Brett Matzke, on behalf of California Trout, Inc., and Kaweah Flyfishers; Save the Redwoods League; the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division of the state Department of Parks and Recreation; the Tule River Tribe; Phantom Duck Club; Bruce Hafenfeld on behalf of the California Cattlemen’s Association; the High Desert Multiple-Use Coalition; California Association of Four Wheel Drive Clubs; the California Native Plant Society; Sequoia Forest Industries; Sierra Forest Products; the American Motorcycle Association District #37.
There was an agreement, you might say, but not really. It may have seemed that the issues of the Sequoia were settled by the MSA, but they weren’t. The Sierra Club and other organizations continued to push for what some would call greater protections for areas in and around giant sequoia groves — and others would call greater restrictions. Their success in April 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited the Trail of 100 Giants to sign the Monument Proclamation, meant, eventually, an end to off-road motorized recreation on more than 300,000 acres of land — and other changes in land use.
Still, when the management plan for the Monument was developed, the MSA had to be considered where it had not been overridden by the presidential proclamation.
Only recently, when Sequoia National Forest’s Forest Supervisor Teresa Benson signed the Record of Decision for the new Forest Plan did the MSA cease to have a part in the management of the national forest.
The hard feelings, unfortunately, continue.
You can read the MSA online HERE.
Wildfire, water & weather update
More of the same in California. Weather cooler than we might expect at this time of the year but likely to start heating up, continuing to melt the massive snowpack.
The best Sierra Nevada weather forecasts can be found at NWS Hanford, HERE, and NWS Sacramento, HERE.
Wildfire update: As of this morning, CalFire’s incident page reports it has responded to 985 wildfires this season, which is the same as last week but there’s also no map displayed on the website yet, so I’m not sure it’s up to date this morning. Fortunately, most wildfires so far have been contained with very little acreage.
The federal InciWeb system shows more HERE, including lightning fires in Klamath National Forest in northeastern California and the Nob Fire on San Bernardino National Forest which is just about out.
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Giant sequoias in the news
• The Washington Examiner has an opinion piece about the Save Our Sequoias Act by Benji Backer of the American Conservation Coalition Action HERE. An excerpt:
Wildfires, exacerbated by both poor forest management and climate change, have ravaged the ecosystems. In the last eight years, we’ve seen nearly one-fifth of these groves destroyed. That’s why legislators from both sides of the aisle, as well as industry and nonprofit groups, are rallying around the Save Our Sequoias Act, which would empower local stakeholders to protect these iconic trees without lowering environmental standards.
That’s not quite accurate — not “one-fifth of the groves have been destroyed,” but about that number of the largest, oldest giant sequoia were killed in only 14 months across the 2020 and 2021 fire seasons (according to a scientist for Save the Redwoods League.)
• The New York Times has published an interesting article HERE (gift link) about how California might begin to navigate extreme weather. Here’s the headline: “First Drought, Then Flood. Can the West Learn to Live Between Extremes? When Californians aren’t thirsting for water, they’re drowning in it. But experts see a way to navigate climate swings.” And an excerpt:
In recent years, it is the dry side of California that has captured headlines: dwindling reservoirs where boat ramps lead only to sand, almond orchards ripped up for lack of irrigation water, catastrophic wildfires that rage through desiccated forests and into towns. In the longer view, though, the state’s water problems have come just as often from deluge as from drought. Other parts of the country can count on reasonably steady precipitation, but California has always been different, teetering between drenching winters and blazing summers, between wet years and dry ones — fighting endlessly to exert control over a flow of water that vacillates, sometimes wildly, between too much and too little.
Giant sequoia around the world
What do you do when you have a grand old tree hidden away in your community? Well, in Vancouver, B.C. — they climb it!
A giant sequoia known as the Cambie Climbing Tree grows in an area not known to many and through the years has been fitted with ropes and tires to assist people in climbing it. Those who make it into the upper branches are rewarded with gorgeous views. You can read about it HERE, see a photo and watch a video.
Thanks for reading!