70 



thinned in 1948, thinned in 1964, prescribe burned in 1965, 1966, 

 and again prescribe burned in 1978. 



These pictures give you an idea of the way these stands look. 

 Site 2 is low in fire hazard, with little ground fuel, vigorous 

 growth, a pleasure to walk through, and it possesses a visual qual- 

 ity of an open forest st£ind with a bright green understory. 



To summarize this information, both stands had similar charac- 

 teristics in about 1880, being crowded with vigorous young giant 

 sequoia that had germinated following fire. Through both pre- 

 scribed fire and careful thinning, site two now has fewer bigger 

 trees, reduced fire hazard, and improved aesthetic quality when 

 compared to site 1. 



I should have made this bigger, but figure 1 graphically shows 

 the decline in numbers that has occurred through natural succes- 

 sion and mortality over 80 years of measurement. The site 1 aver- 

 age number is shown here, and site 2 is shown as a static point; 

 site 1 having 228 trees per acre, site 2 having 95 trees per acre. 



If we were to extend the time line on that graph to the year 

 3000 — ^that's 11 feet away from the last point on the scale — the 

 studies on park lands adjacent to Whitaker's Forest show that 

 under natural conditions, only two to eight giant sequoia trees will 

 exist per acre at that time. The rest of the hundreds of trees that 

 started in the natural forest will be dead. 



It is also noteworthy that on sites 1 and 2, neither of these has 

 added any new giant sequoias, following those that were estab- 

 lished in the 1875 fires. Without hot fires and open forest canopy, 

 giant sequoia seedlings rarely ever survive for more than a few 

 weeks. 



This becomes significant when we realize that the old veterans 

 do fall over. They are not part of the unchanging elements of the 

 site. In the eight decades of university ownership of Whitaker's 

 Forest, 8 of our 220 large giant sequoias have been lost to 

 windthrow, a loss of 0.045 percent per year. 



This rate of loss generally agrees with that experienced on other 

 ancient forest ownerships, and at that rate, we will lose about 50 

 percent of the remaining old-growth sequoia trees in the next 1,200 

 years. 



Gradual mortality, however, is not the real threat to continued 

 existence of giant sequoia growth. The continual regeneration on 

 giant sequoia sites of shade-tolerant species such as white fir and 

 incense-cedar, coupled with the high danger of wildfire in Califor- 

 nia forests, dictates that we can not merely watch the forest and 

 wait. 



Forest succession is a slow march to the future, and will continue 

 to function in ways spectacular and not. Whether or not it fulfills 

 human desires, it will continue to change ecosystems, habitats, for- 

 ests, and lives. 



Our nonresponse to the lessons of biology has provided us with 

 some stem lessons and serious consequences, and we will pay a 

 very high price for our ignorance and our arrogance as recent con- 

 flagrations in Yellowstone National Park and in the Oakland Hills 

 have so devastatingly shown. 



Neither natural forest succession nor human manipulation are 

 environmentally benign, nor are they necessarily scenic. Yet, both 



