The Castle Fire that roared through Sequoia National Park in 2020 destroyed an estimated 10 percent of the existing population of giant sequoias. In a bid to blunt that loss, the National Park Service is proposing to plant sequoia seedlings in areas of the park that sustained the greatest losses caused by both that 2020 fire and the 2021 KNP Complex fire and is seeking public comment on the proposal, which also aims to improve fisher habitat.
The public review period for this Re-Establish Tree Seedlings in Severely Burned Giant Sequoia Groves and Adjacent Fisher Habitat Environmental Assessment will end on August 6. This review period follows the receipt of initial feedback from the public in February and March 2023.
The environmental assessment for the project evaluates three alternatives and includes supporting analyses conducted in accordance with the Wilderness Act and other federal resource protection laws. Public review of the EA will inform the National Park Service’s decisions on how to address the devastating loss of sequoias and fisher habitat from those wildfires.
Under the preferred alternative, the parks would collect, grow, and hand plant sequoia and other mixed conifer seedlings in up to six sequoia groves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The parks would also plant conifer seedlings in a proposed critical habitat corridor of the endangered fisher immediately south of the Redwood Mountain Grove in Kings Canyon National Park.
The establishment of seedlings in these areas would point these groves and critical habitat toward recovery of their pre-fire forest species compositions, as they would have done naturally had they not experienced such severe fire effects during recent fires. Planting plans, informed by site-specific evaluations and analyses, will determine final acreage and specific locations of planting actions. The parks currently estimate that planting may be necessary on up to roughly 1,200 acres of previously forested areas.
Additional information on the EA is can be found at this site.
Attend a virtual public meeting on Tuesday, July 25 at 5 p.m. PST
Attend a site visit on July 21 or 28, 2023. Space for the site visits is limited; attendance is available on a first come, first served basis.
Submit your comments online through midnight, Sunday, August 6. During this time, any individual or group can submit comments electronically through the project website (which is the preferred method) or via mail to:
Superintendent
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
Attn: Re-Establish Tree Seedlings Post Fire
47050 Generals Highway
Three Rivers, CA 93271
Following the public comment period, the Park Servic will consider all feedback to inform next steps, which could either be selecting one of the proposed alternatives (or a variation of an alternative) for implementation or determining that additional analysis is necessary before making a decision.
