In The News
Team of Researchers Find Wildfire is Future to Saving California’s Giant Sequoias
By Hunter Sowards
CBS13 News
Wildfires were once seen as the downfall of the treasured giant sequoia trees in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, but a team of researchers with the John Muir Project released a recent study outlining how they could be our best shot at saving them.
Read MoreConservation Groups Seek to Block Logging Projects in Giant Sequoia National Monument
By Carmen Kohlruss
The Magazine of the Sierra Club
The sequoia groves and endangered animals found in California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument are imperiled by a pair of logging projects, conservation groups argue in a new lawsuit that asks a federal judge to put a stop to the proposed tree cutting.
Read MoreNPS Wants to Plant Sequoias; Environmentalists Sue, Say There’s No Need to Butt In
By Andrew J. Campa
Los Angeles Times
High-intensity fires in 2020 and 2021 devastated the adult sequoia tree population globally, particularly at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in Southern California. That is one of the few things that National Park Service staffers and the environmentalists who are suing the agency can agree on.
Read MoreWhy Environmentalists are Suing the National Park Service to Prevent It From Planting Trees
By Jonathan Park & Janna Van Vranken
CNN
The National Park Service wants to replant sequoia groves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, where wildfires in 2020 and 2021 inflicted lasting damage on the iconic sequoia forests. Environmentalists in California say its a huge mistake.
Read MoreThe Logjam in Biden’s $50 Billion Dollar Wildfire Plan
By Paul Koberstein & Jessica Applegate
Undark Op-Ed
On Maui, a solitary beachfront home, unscorched by the wildfire that devastated the town of Lahaina in August, stands amid the ashes of dozens of incinerated homes. And in Northern California, a large, mostly unscathed forest mysteriously surrounds the devastated town of Paradise, lost five years ago to another wildfire.
Read MoreClimate Activists Seek to Save the Planet by Cutting, Burying Trees
By Autumn Spredemann
The Epoch Times
Tree thinning is a disputed procedure that has drawn as much criticism within the environmental community as it has support. Many scientists, researchers, and conservationists are against it, saying that tree thinning can even worsen wildfires.
Read MoreAfter More Than 100 Years, Gray Wolves Reappear in Giant Sequoia National Monument
By Louis SahagĂșn
Los Angeles Times
On the morning of July 6, Michelle Harris saw a huge canid with yellow eyes dash across a fire road lined with charred snags and giant sequoias blackened by recent wildfires. The animal “paused, started to pace and made clipped barking sounds — like it was very worried about something,” recalled Harris, a biologist who was working on a restoration project in the area.
Read MoreLogging for Fire Mitigation Stokes Anger Among Residents
By John Aguilar
The Denver Post
Hundreds of freshly cut ponderosa logs lay stacked in rows in Elk Meadow Park, some measuring several feet in diameter — and more than a century old. Not far away, wood chips and slash litter a clearing where trees once stood.
Read MoreScientist: Trees Felled in Vain in Name of Fire Control
By Dana Gentry
Nevada Current
An alliance between governments and the commercial logging industry under the guise of fire management is decimating forests, wreaking ecological havoc, and exacerbating risks for people and property, according to scientists at odds with what they call archaic methods that are futile in controlling fires.
Read MoreBillions in Feds’ Spending on Megafire Risks Seen as Misdirected
By Bobby Magill
Bloomberg Law
Congress is spending billions to save communities from Western megafires by thinning large swaths of forests even as scientists say climate change-driven drought and heat are too extreme for it to work.
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