In The News
Suppressing Wildfires is Harming California’s Giant Sequoia Trees
By Adam Popescu
NewScientist: Life
Recent years have seen some of the largest wildfires in California’s history, and one of the best approaches to limiting their damage is controlled burns that reduce natural fuel for the fires. But now, it seems these burns are destroying the state’s iconic sequoia trees.
Read MoreForest Service Sued for Approving Plumas Forest Logging Project
By Samantha Hawkins
Bloomberg Law
The US Forest Service approved a logging project in the Plumas National Forest without adequately assessing its environmental effects, environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed Friday in California federal court. The $650 million Central/West Slope Project plans to log and burn 217,721 acres of mature and old-growth habitat in Plumas National Forest, located in the northern Sierra Nevadas, John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and other groups said in the lawsuit.
Read MoreTeam 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
Conservation groups argue in a new lawsuit that logging projects threaten the sequoia groves and endangered animals in California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument.
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 adult sequoias, especially in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, a point of agreement among environmentalists and NPS.
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, but environmentalists argue it’s a huge mistake after wildfires.
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 Sahagún
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 More