A 1.3-Million-Acre Approach To Preserving Nature

A 1.3-Million-Acre Approach To Preserving Nature 

By Kurt Repanshek

Once she overcame her fear of living beneath the thin nylon roof of her tent on the floor of the Sierra National Forest, Deanna Lynn Wulff was captivated by the surrounding beauty.

“I’d wake up and the sun would be shining through the trees, and the birds would be singing, there’d be this flow of water,” she said. “Chipmunks running around, and the smell of the forest. Such a wonderful smell. ... This experience altered the rest of the course of my life.”

That experience 25 years or so ago, necessitated by low wages as a waitress and a need to pay tuition bills, sent Wulff on a mission to ensure the landscape of the 1.3-million-acre Sierra National Forest gained better protection. Protection, she said, to save its forests from logging and the roads that go along with that activity, and to focus more on restoration of the landscape.

"When you go in to protect the place, you want to think about the longer term," she told me when we talked earlier this summer.

The bold aspect of her vision, dubbed Unite the Parks, won't come easy. It's to transfer the national forest with its old growth groves of giant sequoias, river-cut canyons, more than 500,000 acres of official wilderness, and spectacular High Sierra scenery to the National Park Service and redesignate it as Range of Light National Monument.

It's a move, Wulff believes, that not only would better protect the High Sierra, but provide jobs.

"You need to put people to work. And one way to do that is to say we're going to make this into a monument," she said. "And we're going to build trails, and we're going to restore the landscape. And we're going to put funding behind that. That's really, really important if you're looking at the long-term economic welfare of the people who live there."

Such a transfer could do much more than protect forests from logging and create jobs for locals, though. Look about the West during this fiercely hot summer and you'll see how climate change is impacting the region through wildfires that are more intense than others in recent history. There is the drought draining lakes Powell and Mead. Wildlife is facing the sixth mass extinction. The Biden administration wants 30 percent of the country's lands and waters preserved for nature by 2030.

Shifting the Sierra National Forest to the Park Service could address each of those issues in some fashion, believe its proponents. (An additional benefit could be reduced crowding seen in many parts of the National Park System, for while national forests provide outlets for people searching for space in the outdoors, a national park designation seems to greatly influence their decision on where to go.)

Located as it is between Yosemite National Park to the north and Kings Canyon National Park to the south, such a change in agency management would create a nearly 3-million-acre block of parklands when you consider Kings Canyon butts up to Sequoia National Park to the south. 

"To reconnect ecosystems, one of the problems that we face is the areas that we set aside for protection are often isolated," Dr. Stuart Pimm, an expert on global patterns of habitat loss and species extinction based at Duke University and one of more than 200 scientists and academics who have endorsed Wulff's "Unite the Parks" initiative, said during a phone call. 

While many protected areas in the West are large, he went on, they're not always large enough "to have a sort of functioning ecosystem that the major predator species need to be able to roam across."

Stitching together Yosemite, a Range of Light National Monument, Kings Canyon National Park, and Sequoia National Park would create a greatly protected ecosystem almost as large as Death Valley National Park, which is nearly 3.4 million acres. 

Pimm appreciates that the national forest designation offers some protection for the land and waters within the Sierra National Forest, but argues that it doesn't go far enough. The Forest Service, he pointed out, is in the business of multiple use.

"The major predators, the bears, pumas, wolves, species like that, need to be able to roam across very extensive landscapes," said Pimm. "In this particular case, you might think it's already national forest land, so what's the point of making it a national monument? Well, I think the simple answer to that is that national forests, for whatever reason, are multiple use, there is a strong component of forest exploitation within national forests. And that often leaves the forest being fragmented, it often leads to them being degraded. This would be a way of greatly improving the forest protection and bringing them back to old-growth forest, rather than forests that are constantly being logged."

Pimm also noted that the Convention on Biological Diversity this summer released its draft Global Biodiversity Framework, in which the need for expansive protected areas for wildlife was stated.

"Despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide and this decline is projected to continue or worsen under business-as-usual scenarios," said the document. Policy actions are needed to not just stop that decline by 2030, it adds, but allow "for the recovery of natural ecosystems" by 2050, at which time the Convention's "vision of 'living in harmony with nature'" will have been accomplished.

"Connectivity is a very key piece of that. It's not just a matter of, you know, protecting more of the landscape. It's a matter of connecting up the landscapes that we have. In fact, one of the milestones is the net gain in the area connectivity and integrity of natural systems," explained Pimm. "Throughout this document, there is a statement that we need to be reconnecting nature. And that's what this will do. It'll connect two large national parks, and make them functionally even bigger."

The Forest Service itself appreciates the role the Sierra National Forest can play in muting climate change, noting in its planning documents that the Nelder grove of about 100 giant sequoias is valuable as a resource in case the warming climate impacts the sequoias in Kings Canyon and the Giant Sequoia National Monument.

Yet Wulff's vision is not one easily attained. Not only is there a private Facebook group with 5,500 members opposing her efforts, but U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, in whose district the Sierra National Forest lies, is a strong proponent of not just logging but of multiple use of public lands.

Ryan Henson, the policy director at the California Wilderness Coalition, said the organization hasn't closely followed Wulff's campaign, but feared there would be too much opposition today to transfer a parcel of national forest to the Park Service.

"It happened a great deal in the past. Absolutely. Lassen (Volcanic) National Park, Sequoia-Kings Canyon, all of those were carved out of national forests," said Henson. "Used to be very, very common. But the Forest Service has fought it really hard as an agency. That's one of the reasons that they've worked to become a little better at conservation in part, in competition with the Park Service. But, I mean, they, Congress never switches from agencies. Very rarely. The last time they did it in California was switching from the (Bureau of Land Management) to the National Park Service in the Mojave National Preserve. It took 15 years to pass the bill. It actually happened. Maybe I shouldn't say it wouldn't happen."

"Visionary proposals" such as Wulff's are needed, he added after a bit. "You never know with these things. And god bless her for trying. Just because I'm focused on this more immediate stuff, like next year's budget. I think what she's doing is super important."

Wulff would certainly agree with that statement.

"It would restore the forest to its former glory, stop commercial logging of our last living trees. And would create a recreational paradise for people, and a wildlife refuge for all of those species out there that need it," she said.