Tahoe National Forest cares for Big Trees
Only six giant sequoias grow in small Placer County Big Trees Grove
Volume 2, Number 41 - Monday, April 29, 2024
Published every Monday and Thursday
Perspective
THE MOST NORTHERLY — AND SMALLEST — GROVE of giant sequoias is located on Tahoe National Forest, and known as the Placer County Big Trees Grove.
There are only six giant sequoias in this grove, and they grow about 150 road miles north of their nearest neighbors in Calaveras Big Trees State Park. The grove is in a remote area northeast of Auburn.
According to a report HERE from the San Francisco Chronicle, core sample testing shows that the trees may be inbred, “a condition that researchers say is just as unhealthy for trees as it is for humans.”
You may recall that I wrote about these genetically unique trees when they were threatened by the Mosquito Fire in September 2022.
As reported in the 2023 progress report from the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition, Tahoe National Forest maintains a 160-acre Special Botanical Area for the trees. Here’s what the Coalition report said about the grove:
In fall 2023, the TNF completed five acres of prescribed pile burning within the Placer County Big Trees Grove to consume downed fuels created during Mosquito Fire protection efforts. To further protect this grove from future catastrophic wildfire, the TNF completed 304 acres of prescribed burns in units adjacent to the grove to reduce fuels and increase fire resiliency throughout the surrounding landscape. An additional 200 acres remain to be burned in the vicinity of the grove.
Last week TNF’s Public Affairs Officer Lauren Faulkenberry reported that spring prescribed burn operations will begin as early as today, dependent on fuels and weather conditions.
Planned burn locations and timelines to complete projects may vary across the forest.
Among prescribed burn projects planned by TNF is the Biggie Project — up to 269 acres of underburning over several units near the Placer Big Trees Grove.
According to the 2016 Environmental Assessment prepared for this project, “Treatments within Big Trees are not proposed as part of the Biggie project. A separate project, the Big Trees Ecological Restoration and Protection Project, focused on small fuels reduction, reintroduction of low-intensity fire, regeneration of native sequoias, and hazard tree removal, is ongoing.”
Lawsuit update
I heard back from attorney René P. Voss about why a lawsuit by the Sierra Club, Earth Island Institute and Sequoia ForestKeeper was moved from the United States District Court, Northern District of California, to the district court’s Eastern District of California, Fresno Division.
The suit against the Forest Service is related to what the organizations call “two large logging and vegetation management projects in the Giant Sequoia National Monument and Sequoia National Forest.”
Voss said that when the case was originally filed in late February, there was congestion on the Eastern District’s docket because of a lack of judges.
“We filed in the N.D. because of that,” he said. “When Judge Kirk Sherriff was appointed, the DOJ and we agreed that the E.D. was the more appropriate venue, and they agreed to essentially keep the schedule intact.”
Voss said the government said it will answer the complaint on May 13.
“But that will only be a 2-page denial of everything,” he added.
The case is 1:24-cv-00473, and there was a link to it in Thursday’s edition.
Coming soon
On Saturday night, I attended the spring banquet of the Sierra Club’s Kern-Kaweah Chapter in Bakersfield. The speaker was Chad Hanson, a research biologist who is also the director of the John Muir Project of the Earth Island Institute.
Hanson’s topic was giant sequoias, and yes, the Sierra Club and Earth Island Institute are two of the parties suing the Forest Service over the planned Castle and Windy Fire restoration projects.
I’ll have a report on his talk in Thursday’s edition — and I’m working on reports from a couple of other recent interviews, as well.
Wildfire, water & weather update
Maybe the snow season is over (I hope so!) The best Sierra Nevada weather forecasts are at NWS Hanford, HERE, and NWS Sacramento, HERE.
The headline sounds really scary, but when you check out the maps with this article the summer temperatures for California don’t actually look too bad. You can read “Summer 2024 Temperature Outlook: It Could Be One Of The Nation's Hottest” on The Weather Channel HERE.
Pacific Crest Trail hikers have a new tool from the National Weather Service (if they can get a cell signal). The NWS just announced that the Experimental Hiker Risk for the Pacific Crest Trail is up and running! More features will be added. Check it out HERE.
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I've been to that grove. It is an anomaly. How did sequoia seeds fly from Calaveras, over multiple drainages, 160 miles to the north where they found a hospitable site in an inconspicuous place? A bird? A bird that ate a squirrel that had eaten some sequoia seeds? IDk.