Save Our Sequoias Act Is “Unnecessary,” Says Group

Natural recovery of giant sequoia forests in Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite national parks that were severely burned in recent years negates the need for the “Save Our Sequoias Act,” which has been introduced to Congress, according to Wilderness Watch.

Passage of the act, the advocacy group maintains, could undermine the Wilderness Act and damage giant sequoia groves in the parks by allowing machinery into the forests.

The group wants Congress to vote against the bill, and cites the growth of thousands of sequoia seedlings in the Redwood Mountain Grove in Kings Canyon National Park as proof that SOSA is not needed. The grove was impacted by the devastating KNP Complex Fire in 2021, which affected both Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. In areas of highest fire intensity, 100 percent of trees and vegetation were killed, including thousands of mature giant sequoias, according to the National Park Service.

Mason Parker, wilderness defense director at Wilderness Watch, told the Traveler that during a summer visit to the Red Mountain Grove, he observed “vast and lush regeneration of giant sequoias–thousands and thousands of seedlings and saplings per acre. The trees were of varying heights, meaning that this regrowth had been happening year after year since the KNP Complex Fire in 2021. The density of the regrowth was significantly thicker in the areas that burned with high-intensity than those that burned with mid- and low-intensity. These young trees are thriving in post high-severity fire conditions as if the forest depends on it.”

This is important, considering that SOSA assumes that redwood forests need human intervention following wildfires to recover.

An attempt by the Park Service to manually reforest the burned areas was a failure, said Parker.

“We came across many dead and dying sequoia seedlings that were planted in an attempt at reforestation,” he said. “The poor health of the seedlings raised some concerns that they could be introducing root pathogens. Fortunately, the naturally regenerating trees seemed plenty healthy.”

Wilderness Watch worries about the effect SOSA could have on the recovery of redwood forests. The group notes that if passed it would amend the Wilderness Act to allow for human-conceived “reforestation” activities such as planting in officially designated Wilderness areas and then further manipulative gardening with “vegetation competition control,” which could interfere with the natural regrowth taking place after the wildfire.

“While other parts of the bill allow logging and possibly roadbuilding to access sequoia groves, we are concerned that the agencies would interpret the bill so broadly that it would dismantle the remaining protections afforded by the Wilderness Act,” explained Parker. “If passed, the bill could allow for roads, logging, and burning in federally designated Wilderness under the guise of reforestation.”

Parker also noted that SOSA would allow agencies to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires agencies to consider the potential environmental impact of a project and take public input before proceeding. Under SOSA, agencies could conduct a NEPA analysis after a project, in hindsight.

“Fundamentally, NEPA is a democratizing act that allows for citizens to have a say in how our government agencies spend tax dollars and treat our environment,” he explained. “When NEPA is bypassed, as it would be under SOSA, this is a threat to our fundamental pro-democracy values.”

Giant sequoias are known for their resistance to insects and disease and their fire-adapted life cycle, but the bipartisan lawmakers who support SOSA point to the hotter drought of 2012-2016, which appears to have been a tipping point for giant sequoias and other Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forests. In hotter droughts, unusually high temperatures worsen the effects of low precipitation, resulting in greater water loss from trees and lower water availability, making them more vulnerable to wildfires, which have increased in intensity due to climate change.

The National Park Service notes that “[o]ver 85 percent of all giant sequoia grove acreage across the Sierra Nevada has burned in wildfires between 2015 and 2021, compared to only one quarter in the preceding century.” 13 to 19 percent of the world's large sequoias are estimated to have died in the Castle Fire and the KNP Complex and Windy fires combined, or 8,431 to 11,897 trees.

Because of the increased threat to giant sequoias, SOSA has plenty of support among groups that support national parks, including the National Park Foundation and National Parks Conservation Association.

"We agree with taking congressional action to declare an emergency in order to ensure the survival of giant sequoias,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at NPCA, when the bill was introduced. “To this end, the federal agencies, state of California, and tribes should work together to develop a science-based plan supported by dedicated, sustained federal funding and staffing. We also support transparency as the National Park Service and US Forest Service along with partners address grove-by-grove resilience and enhancement, and report their progress while setting priorities for future efforts.”

Wilderness Watch believes that a more hands-off approach is called for, considering the new growth observed at Redwood Mountain Grove.

“These forests are ecosystems, not museums. They burn, they regenerate, they change, and that's all part of the cycle of things much bigger than us,” said Parker. “The regeneration at Redwood Mountain Grove inside Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness is proof that the rationale behind the Save Our Sequoias Act is dangerously misguided. In a time when everything has been disrupted and mismanaged by humans for centuries, what these forests really need is a little bit of space.”