A bill’s misleading name hides a dangerous set of rollbacks
The great sequoia forests of the southern Sierra Nevada offer some of the most impressive and awe-inspiring landscapes in the country. Towering groves of ancient, giant sequoias rise above the canopies of lesser trees, scraping the sky and anchoring ecosystems that exist nowhere else on Earth.
The “Save Our Sequoias Act,” a bill recently re-introduced in Congress, claims to enhance protections from wildfire for these iconic trees. Yet behind its misleading name lies a dangerous set of cuts that open the door to rushed logging projects and weaken protections for wildlife and their habitats.
The sequoia forests and Sierra Nevada are iconic and irreplaceable
The Sequoia National Forest, Sierra National Forest and Giant Sequoia National Monument together harbor a wide range of habitats — from flower-studded alpine meadows to dense conifer groves.
At the center of these landscapes stand the giant sequoias: some of the largest trees on Earth and among the oldest living organisms on the planet. One such tree, known as the President Tree, located in Sequoia National Park, stands at 247 feet tall and is estimated to be more than 3,200 years old.
What’s at stake if logging is allowed
Undermining protections for these forests threatens more than just iconic trees. Inappropriate logging projects that remove older trees could damage the very systems that sustain giant sequoias and their groves.
Removing large numbers of mature trees can drastically alter forest structure and function. The forest canopy plays a crucial role in maintaining the cool, moist microclimates that sequoia seedlings need to germinate. While logging equipment compacts soil, making it harder for their massive roots, which help cultivate soil quality, to spread and receive needed water and nutrients. On steep terrain, tree removal and development increases the risk of erosion and landslides, toppling trees and sending sediment into rivers, further degrading water quality. These are the kinds of impacts that a thorough environmental review process would help to prevent or mitigate.
Once disrupted, these systems are difficult, even impossible, to restore to their original health and complexity.
Some of these impacts are immediate and visible, like heavy machinery disturbing wildlife or sediment choking once-clear streams. But others may take years to appear: degraded soil that can’t adequately support native plants, canopy gaps that change temperature and light levels, water-quality that poisons aquatic life and fragmented habitats that quietly push species toward decline.
And once these old-growth habitats are logged, fragmented or degraded — they don’t simply grow back. Forests like these can take centuries to recover, even then what is lost may never truly return.
These forests deserve real protection
The so-called “Save Our Sequoias” Act may come with a compelling name, but the changes it proposes would sideline environmental review and shift oversight to less accountable groups, putting wildlife, species and entire ecosystems at risk.
Protecting the sequoias means upholding the bills and polices that conserve this land. It means ensuring that forest management is based on science, ecological health and robust, long-term stewardship.
Some of these sequoias have stood longer than our nation, longer than the Colosseum, longer than the Great Wall of China — and the ecosystems they anchor are older than our politics and more enduring than whatever short-term gains may be wrought by their harm.
We will continue to oppose the Save Our Sequoias Act and the damage it threatens to bring to some of our most ancient organisms, diverse ecosystems and irreplaceable public lands.
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Ellen runs campaigns to protect America’s beautiful places, from local beachfronts to remote mountain peaks. She sits on the Steering Committee of the Arctic Defense Campaign and co-coordinates the Climate Forests Campaign. Ellen previously worked as the organizing director for Environment America’s Climate Defenders campaign and managed grassroots campaign offices across the country. Ellen lives in Denver, where she likes to hike in Colorado’s mountains.
