74 



do the best thing for wildlife, fish and wildlife, you leave the eco- 

 system alone, and it will take care of them. Whenever you start 

 messing around with it, then you have to either mitigate for prob- 

 lems or do damage. 



Mr. DOOLEY. Is that consistent with Mr. Gasser's photos of some 

 of the forests that were burned in 1875 and some of the manage- 

 ment techniques that were utilized there? Which one of those for- 

 ests or particular areas have greater wildlife activity? 



Mr. Christenson. I am not that familiar with both of those. But 

 in general, if you have a natural system operating, it is going to 

 do the best thing for the assemblage of wildlife that you have 

 there. If you change things you are going to change the wildlife 

 population that depend on all that. 



Mr. DoOLEY. Mr. Gasser. 



Mr. Gasser. A natural system includes fire. We have had 80 

 years of fire exclusion. We can not manage the groves and hope to 

 preserve them without using logging. We can do a lot with fire. We 

 need to come back through and prescribe bum again and again, 

 but what are you going to do with trees that are 3, 4, and 5 feet 

 in diameter that have been killed by fire, yet remain as standing 

 and fallen dead fuel? 



To me, the answer is clear. I think we've got logging techniques 

 that are far better than what we have been using. But we have to 

 take care of ourselves. We're part of the ecosystem, too. I don't 

 think we can ignore that. 



Mr. DooLEY. When we saw some photos earlier, by an earlier 

 panel, that was showing some of the management practices, and 

 some of them looked deplorable, where they have gone into some 

 and left some standing redwoods there. We also have some pic- 

 tures — well, I've seen the area before and after, and I'm not real 

 pleased when I see it. 



By the same token, though, those four stand where some of those 

 redwood trees were also interspersed extensively with your white 

 woods and your white conifers. 



My question is, are not the redwood groves that have this exten- 

 sive white fir growth at real jeopardy if we have a wildfire, which 

 is inevitably going to break out? How many of the sequoias are 

 going to survive that type of situation, under a limited manage- 

 ment regime? 



Mr. RuNDEL. I think I can speak to that in one sense. There is 

 really interesting, long-term tree ring records now that show fire 

 history. We have a 2,000-year fire history for the Sierra Nevada. 



We know that the present fire regime has changed dramatically. 

 We have had periods with much more frequent fires. We have had 

 periods with really infrequent fires. And there have been periods 

 in the past in sequoia history, going back centuries, when there 

 probably were more fuels committed naturally than are occurring 

 today artificially. 



Yes, there would be mortality of individual trees, and perhaps 

 some large ones, but the species has had 15 million years to adapt 

 to that kind of fire cycle. It may be less socially acceptable for very 

 large fires, but I think giant sequoias actually do best under those 

 more intense fires. 



