A new management plan for the Giant Sequoia National Monument places greater limits on timber cutting in and near groves of the world’s largest trees, but would still allow logging in nearly a quarter of the monument.
The plan, released Tuesday by the U.S. Forest Service, is the agency’s latest attempt at devising a blueprint for managing the 328,000-acre monument, which President Clinton created in 2000 to protect 34 groves of giant sequoias scattered on the slopes of the southern Sierra Nevada in the Sequoia National Forest.
Although the monument designation bans commercial logging, that didn’t stop the Forest Service from issuing a plan in 2004 that would have allowed enough timber cutting in the monument to fill more than 2,000 logging trucks a year — all in the name of reducing the risk of wildfire.
Conservationists sued the agency, accusing it of trying to assuage the local timber industry. Calling the 2004 plan “incomprehensible,” a federal judge tossed it out, ordering the Forest Service to draw up a new one.
Sequoia National Forest Supervisor Kevin Elliott, who oversees the monument, said the new blueprint strikes a balance, calling for the use of mechanical tree thinning and managed fire to restore forest health and encourage regeneration of giant sequoias, which are found in the wild only on the western slopes of the Sierra.
From The Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sequoia-monument-20120905,0,1321175.story