Victory for Forest Health
Stewards of the Sequoia, 9/3/2008 [here]
Federal investigators recently concluded the Forest Service acted properly in felling hazardous trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument, bringing to a quiet end a probe loudly sought by congressional Democrats based on complaints filed by Save America’s Forests and local group Sequoia Forestkeepers.
The Giant Sequoia Trees are truly monumental, some having been around since before Christ. There is grave danger of them being incinerated due to many surrounding dead and dying trees caused by a hundred years of fire suppression combined with decades of lawsuits filed by anti-stewardship groups to block active management. Fortunately the Forest Service decided to clear dead trees in a small area around some of the most special Giant Sequoias trees on the Trail of 100 Giants, but even after the project was done, with excellent results, the anti’s complained. They claimed Giant Sequoia trees had been chopped down, but investigators found this, as well as all their other allegations, to be untrue.
Thousands of miles away a federal judge rejected an attempt by the New Hampshire Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and the Center for Biological Diversity to halt two logging operations in White Mountain National Forest. It came down to wanting the judge to intervene while the anti groups succeeded in making the logging operations unprofitable through delay.
Meanwhile in Humboldt County the owner of the local logging company hiked in to deliver his message to tree sitters who protested logging there for decades. “Come down out of the sky,” he told them, “The war is over.” After he explained the logging company’s sustainable plan for renewable tree harvesting, tree sitters abandoned their perches in favor of a truce to allow logging of as much timber as the forest produces each year while leaving the old growth untouched.
Now that loggers and tree sitters have ended the war, perhaps through public pressure anti groups can be persuaded to drop their swords and stop filing lawsuits which are incinerating our forest and wildlife while costing taxpayers billions. Find out how we can promote better stewardship of the land at Stewards of the Sequoia [here].
The future of our forests are at stake.