From Carla Cloer of the Sierra Club's Sequoia Task Force:

SEQUOIA NATIONAL MONUMENT BEING LOGGED!

The Sequoia Task Force of the Sierra Club is protesting the Forest Service's
decision to allow commercial logging to go forward in a logging project that
is bulldozing huge swathes and removing ancient trees, many several
centuries old, on ridgetops adjacent to five giant sequoia groves in the
Giant Sequoia National Monument.

This timber sale is called the Saddle Fuels Reduction Project and is all
about removing big trees, not about fire control. This project will take
more than 5 Million Board Feet of big timber! We have asked for an immediate
halt to this project!

The Giant Sequoia National Monument was created in April of 2000. The
Proclamation's provisions were supposed to stop bulldozing, logging and
exploitation of Monument lands. It called for restoration from a century of
logging. However, the Proclamation did allow a few timber sales that had
been approved prior to the creation of the Monument to be completed as a
short term transition for the timber industry. The Secretary of Agriculture
Dan Glickman, whose department included the Forest Service, announced that
this logging was estimated to be completed within about two and a half years
of the signing of the Proclamation.

At the time of the signing of the Proclamation, the Saddle Project contract
termination date was March, 2004. That meant logging should have been
completed by November of 2003 because of seasonal closure of the forest for
winter. BUT, quietly in the backroom of the Forest Service, the contract
deadline was changed giving the industry until 2005. Then the deadline was
changed yet again so the industry now can log until 2006.

Why did this happen? A Forest Service press release implies that the timber
industry had some hazard trees to remove but no documentation confirms any
legal justification for these extensions. We note that our local McNally
fire occurred long after the contract extensions were given.

Local activists have been investigating the logging site where trees have
been falling this week and have found stumps well over 30 inches in
diameter. Such trees here in the arid southern Sierra can be extremely old
since there can be 10 or more annual growth rings to an inch on some sites.
Logging these ancient trees means that it will be centuries before these
areas will recover old growth characteristics and, meanwhile, species that
depend on ancient unlogged forests will have no refuge. The Pacific fisher
is making its last stand here in the southern Sierra; projects such as the
Saddle could mean losing this valiant little creature forever.

We are outraged that the Forest Service did not take seriously its
responsibility to protect this wondrous forest. We have found no compelling
reasons for the Forest Service to have extended the contracts so that damage
could continue in this new Monument. The Sierra Club has already taken the
Forest Service to court for approving a Sequoia Monument Management Plan
that perpetuates logging instead of restoration from logging; now we find
the Forest Service helping the industry to continue and extend the old
damaging pre-Monument logging projects. The only reasonable explanation is
that the Forest Service is just as addicted to logging as the timber
industry itself. The Forest Service cannot be allowed to continue to manage
this National Monument with its emerald meadows, sparkling streams and over
half the earth's groves of giant sequoia! We must turn over management of
the Giant Sequoia National Monument to Sequoia National Park!!! They have a
proven record of nurturing the resources in their care.

The Sierra Club cheered the creation of this Monument as the realization of
John Muir's dream to have all Sequoias protected throughout their range. The
Sierra Club will do its best to protect this magnificent National Monument.
We will keep you posted on our next step! We urge you to protest the
implementation of the Saddle Project by writing letters to your
Congressional representatives and to the Supervisor of Sequoia National
Forest, 1500 West Grand Avenue, Porterville CA 93257.

Please visit the Sierra Club website for the latest updates on the Sequoia
National Monument.

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