41 



says that it is reforested with 490 trees per acre. Now, what would 

 a 30-year-old plantation with 490 trees per acre look like? Is this 

 what you would envision? 



This is unit 1,001 of the Solo Peak timber sale. It was first plant- 

 ed in 1965. It has been replanted many times at taxpayer expense. 

 And here we are out in the dust looking for the trees. Obviously, 

 the Sequoia National Forest was using a different definition of suc- 

 cessful reforestation than we ordinary people. 



Now, several registered foresters have reviewed the Sequoia Na- 

 tional Forest's report, and these critiques elaborate on violations of 

 Forest Service guidelines and scientific methods. These critiques 

 will be submitted for the record. 



[The critiques are held in the committee files.] 



Ms. Cloer. My point there is that the Sequoia National Forest 

 was willing to go to great lengths to support an overinflated log- 

 ging volume and to ignore evidence which might slow the logging. 



Now, how does all this relate to giant sequoias? Well, we knew 

 that destroying the forests around giant sequoia groves would 

 eventually harm the groves because giant sequoias are a part of 

 the larger forest ecosystem. However, we thought that the giant se- 

 quoia situation was not urgent because giant sequoia groves were 

 protected by Forest Service policy, weren't they? 



Logging in giant sequoia groves had been stopped at the turn of 

 the century, and hundreds of signs were posted around the major- 

 ity of groves saying, "Type 1 Grove," which, according to region 5 

 policy meant, "No major activities such as campground or road con- 

 struction or timber cutting will be permitted within a type 1 

 grove." 



Just to be sure, we wrote the regional forester, and he wrote 

 back: "We have not changed our long-standing regional direction — 

 that is policy — for the management of the Sierra redwood groves." 



Now, you can perhaps understand our outrage when, in 1986, we 

 stumbled into this next scene in the Long Meadow giant sequoia 

 grove. The tree in the center is more than 18 feet in diameter. 

 What happened to the type 1 protection, official Forest Service pol- 

 icy? 



Well, the official answer involved a lot of rhetoric, something 

 like, well, they really had not ever officially designated the groves 

 as type 1, and now they have a new policy, and this new policy 

 does have a preservation category, but no groves were in that cat- 

 egory yet. 



This is Red Chief, the 31st largest tree in the world. I am not 

 sure if you can see it, but there is a person standing right to the 

 right of that tree. And here we are in the Peyrone grove. 



Now, this is a logging mentality gone wild. How did the Forest 

 Service describe this type of logging? They called it nonintensive 

 logging. 



And here, in the Converse Basin, they logged the sequoias, too. 

 This was in 1984. Now, in the Converse Basin, the loggers had cut 

 £dl the giants in the late 1800's, and this tree came up from seeds 

 from the original giants. But Sequoia Forest categorized these trees 

 as second growth, and they logged them, too. 



