Pretty much everyone (but the groups suing) agrees that thinning out dense forests reduces the fire danger and helps save the larger trees, yet this court battling still continues.
An excerpt.
Fire plan tossed out at Sequoia monument
By Tom Knudson -- Bee Staff Writer Published 12:01 am PDT Wednesday, August 23, 2006
A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a U.S. Forest Service management plan to use commercial logging to reduce fire danger in the Giant Sequoia National Monument.
Ruling on a lawsuit filed last year by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer found the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Protection Act by not adequately analyzing the impacts of logging in the monument east of Fresno.
"This is an across-the-board victory for one of the most treasured natural resources on the planet," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer.
Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes saw things differently "We are very disappointed by the ruling," he said. "We spent almost four years developing a plan that meets the spirit and intent of President Clinton's proclamation," which created the monument in 2000.
In a related ruling Tuesday, Judge Breyer also ruled in favor of six environmental groups that had sued the Forest Service over four timber sales in the region, three of them in the monument.
Breyer halted the sales -- which had been signed prior to Clinton's proclamation but never actually acted on -- saying the agency failed to consider new information about the potential impacts on a rare weasel-like mammal, the Pacific fisher.
Environmentalists praised the ruling. "I thought it was a brilliant analysis of the need for scientific-based planning to save the Giant Sequoia National Monument," said Ara Marderosian, executive director of Sequoia Forest Keeper, one of the groups that filed suit.
As in other forests across the West, much of the dispute has focused on how best to reduce fire danger. But in the Sequoia the stakes are particularly high because of the majestic sentinel-like trees that are the monument's namesake.
The Forest Service wants to remove larger trees -- pine, fir and cedar, but not sequoia -- in the monument, those up to 30 inches in diameter. Environmentalists like Marderosian say nothing over 9 inches in diameter should be touched.
"Everybody is trying to protect Giant Sequoia trees -- it's just a matter of how," said Mathes of the Forest Service.
