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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask]