Will more forestland be restored to the Tule River Reservation?

‘A long, complicated, and rather sad, sorry story’

Volume 1, Number 8 - Monday, Sept. 26, 2022

A slab cut from a giant sequoia tree is displayed at the entrance to the Tule River Reservation east of Porterville. Giant sequoias grow in the high country of the 55,000-plus acre reservation. — Tule River Tribe via Facebook

Perspective

HERE’S THE BEST NEWS I heard this past week: California’s Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla (both Democrats) have introduced legislation to formally recognize the Tule River Tribe’s reserved water rights and quantify the tribe’s water right of 5,828 acre-feet per year of surface water from the South Fork of the Tule River.

The bill would “authorize, ratify, and confirm the 2007 Agreement entered by the Tribe, the South Tule Independent Ditch Company, and the Tule River Association…” It would also provide funding — apparently as much as $568 million — largely to develop water projects on the reservation. Part of a proposed project includes a reservoir to store water during wetter years for use in drought. 

Having a reliable water system is of critical importance to people who live on the reservation. The settlement with other river water users back in 2007 has not helped the Tule River Tribe because the federal government has never ratified the agreement or provided funding (despite the government’s responsibility to ensure that the reservation it created has water).

If you wonder what this might have to do with giant sequoias, consider this — monarch trees grow in the higher areas of the Tule River Reservation backcountry. And tribal members have fought for decades to have a greater say in the management of federal forest lands that surround the reservation on three sides.

Although the newly-introduced bill, S 4870, is primarily concerned with water rights, it also includes transfer of a relatively small amount of acreage now controlled by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to the Tule River Reservation. I haven’t yet been able to nail down whether these lands may include giant sequoias, but they have been identified as part of the South Fork Tule River headwaters.

There are many aspects of the government’s dealings with the Tule River Yokuts that are shameful. The reservation was once much larger than the current 55,000-plus acres. According to Senator Alan Cranston’s testimony at a 1980 hearing before the United States Senate on Indian Affairs, the legacy of the tribe’s timberlands is “a long, complicated, and rather sad, sorry story.” 

The bill introduced by Sen. Cranston, S. 1988 in the 96th Congress, became Public Law 96-338 in September 1980, “to provide for the United States to hold in trust for the Tule River Indian Tribe certain public domain lands formerly removed from the Tule River Reservation.”

According to the senator, the 1,240 acres in question “originally belonged to the Tule River Indian Tribe and was the most valuable part of the reservation set aside for this tribe in 1873 and again in 1878.”

As described by Cranston, the tribe had no use of the land from the late 1880s and in 1942 by congressional action it became part of Sequoia National Forest. The remaining pages of the senator’s testimony provide greater detail.

The same document includes a statement by Alec Garfield who was then the chairman of the Tule River Tribal Council. Include in that statement: “Once this land is transferred back to the reservation trust status … the giant sequoia or ‘Big Trees’ in this area would be protected by (a plan) which reads in part: ‘To preserve to the extent possible, sequoia trees, especially the large old growth trees and to utilize these trees for wood products only when the trees fall to the ground from natural causes.’ This has always been the custom of the tribe and is now a part of our management plan,” he said.

Garfield is credited with pushing for the restoration of tribal lands and many other accomplishments. I wrote about some of his accomplishments when I was editor of the Porterville Recorder in December 2009. And if you click through and read that article, you’ll see that I was also reporting about the two-year anniversary of the Tule River Water Rights Settlement.

Which brings me back to the good news I reported at the beginning of this post. Good news that a bill has been introduced as the tribe is again facing devastating drought. But also a reminder that there is often great fanfare when a bill is introduced — the really good news will be when it is passed.

You can learn more and watch videos featuring tribal members here. You’ll see that the “long, complicated, and rather sad, sorry story” of the federal government’s treatment of the people of the Tule River Tribe has continued.

The week in wildfires

There aren’t many changes from last week on the wildfire front in giant sequoia country: 

The latest news about the Mosquito Fire this morning is that California’s largest wildfire is at 76,781 acres with 85 percent containment. I haven’t been able to confirm, but map views I’ve seen indicate that the fire did not reach the Placer Big Trees giant sequoia grove. As I’ve reported previously, Tahoe National Forest did work in the grove to help protect the small and genetically distinct trees there.

In Yosemite, the lightning-caused Red and Rodgers fires have been managed together, with the Red now at 8,410 acres and Rodgers now at 2,825 acres as of this morning. Neither have had much growth. The fires are being watched, but not suppressed.

The lightning-caused Summit Fire that began Aug. 3 in southern Sequoia National Park was at 1,394 acres with 75 percent containment as of Sept. 22. From the report at InciWeb: “The fire does not currently threaten any people or infrastructure. However, fire managers have decided that the best way to manage risk in this situation is to suppress the fire using an indirect strategy. This indirect strategy protects firefighter safety by allowing them to engage the fire from favorable terrain, takes advantage of existing burn scars and natural features, and limits impacts to land managed as wilderness.” 

Giant sequoias in the news

• In California, a Race to Save the World’s Largest Trees From Megafires - an article on the Inside Climate News website about the need to use more fire in giant sequoia groves (reading the article will require providing your email address to register). There wasn’t much in this article that was news to me, but I think it does provide a pretty good overview of the situation.

• Western Forests, Snowpack and Wildfires Appear Trapped in a Vicious Climate Cycle - this article, also from Inside Climate News, isn’t specifically about giant sequoias, but certainly describes the vicious cycle that impacts California as much as Colorado.

• Giant sequoia protection efforts underway in the southern Sierra - an article on the Sierra Nevada Conservancy website about the Forest Service’s giant sequoia emergency response.

• Senate version of Save Our Sequoias Act - Last week I noted that California’s Senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein have introduced the Senate version of the Sequoia Act and I promised more this week. I haven’t had time to compare the two versions of the bill to see what might be different. But here’s an article from The Nature Conservancy about the pending legislation. TNC and Save the Redwoods League are among environmental organizations that are not in alignment with the Sierra Club, Sequoia ForestKeeper and other groups on how to manage (or not) giant sequoia groves. Here’s an excerpt from the TNC article that spells out the group’s position: “The Nature Conservancy believes that active interventions grounded in science and designed to restore balance to these ecosystems are necessary. Any final legislation must ensure agencies have the flexibility, resources and sufficient environmental safeguards in place to accelerate this work in a responsible manner. We appreciate the continued bipartisan momentum for protecting our remaining giant sequoias. We look forward to working with lawmakers in both chambers to ensure a sustainable future for these icons of the West.”

• ‘Wildfire Misinformation’ - In the Sept. 12 edition of this newsletter I included information about a commentary published in the journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The opinion piece by a dozen scientists (many from California) was called “Counteracting Wildfire Misinformation.” So, I would also invite you to read a response to that commentary recently published as a guest post on The Smokey Wire (a very informative blog I follow). The author of the response is Jim Furnish, a consulting forester whose 34-year career with the Forest Service included a stint as Deputy Chief of the agency (from 1999-2002). Furnish is also the author of “Toward A Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition,” a book I’ve ordered and look forward to reading. A read of the guest post by Furnish — and the many comments on The Smokey Wire blog — is informative on many levels and illustrates one of the many challenges of forest management (the “experts” don’t seem to be able to agree).

Giant sequoias around the world

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Queen Elizabeth and giant sequoias and shared a bit of information about the big trees at the Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gardens. Now I’ve learned about William Lobb, one of 22 plant hunters employed by Veitch Nurseries during the 19th Century to seek out interesting specimens and bring them back to England for cultivation. Lobb was in San Francisco in 1852 when he heard of the big trees growing in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He referred to one of the monarchs as a “vegetable monster.” 

Here’s the full story of how giant sequoias were brought to England — where they are still commonly referred to as Wellingtonia.

Want more?

GIANTSEQUOIANEWS.COM is also a website where you can find more information about giant sequoia trees, wildfire, the public land management conundrum and more.

Thanks for reading!