John Muir Project fights to protect giant sequoia groves through three lawsuits

JMP joined Wilderness Watch, Sequoia ForestKeeper, and Tule River Conservancy, in a lawsuit against Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to challenge widespread tree cutting and artificial tree plantation projects in sequoia groves within Wilderness. We are represented by Rene Voss and Andrew Hursh. Wilderness Areas are supposed to prioritize natural processes and natural succession, not industrial management intervention. The Park conducted no environmental analysis and allowed no public comments on the huge tree cutting project, and refused to conduct an environmental impact statement on the tree plantation project. In the tree cutting project, the Park ignored stacks of scientific studies finding that tree cutting does not curb wildfires, which are driven by weather and climate. In fact, tree cutting changes the microclimate of the forest and often increases spread and intensity of fires.

In the artificial tree plantation project, the Park claimed that natural post-fire giant sequoia regeneration (seedlings) would be absent or severely lacking in high-intensity fire patches resulting from two natural lightning fires, the Castle fire of 2020 and the KNP Complex fire of 2021. However, JMP and our colleagues conducted a large field study in 2023, and found sequoia seedlings naturally regenerating, and thriving, in 100% of field plots within high-intensity fire areas, with thousands or tens of thousands of sequoia seedlings per acre in most high-intensity fire areas. We found significantly poorer regeneration in adjacent low/moderate-intensity fire areas, where the Park did not propose any tree planting. We also discovered 2023 field data from the Park which also found sequoia seedlings in 100% of their own field plots within high-intensity fire areas. Even though the Park's initial assumptions, upon which they based this misguided tree plantation proposal, proved to be false, the Park decided to rush ahead with the plan anyway, despite having admitted that their assumptions were wrong, and despite abundant scientific evidence submitted by JMP regarding the harm that the artificially-grown seedlings would cause to the natural sequoia groves, both in terms of introducing invasive and destructive root pathogens, and in terms of causing risky and potentially harmful genetic problems.