116 



REVISED COPY 



Testimony of Caria Cloer 



concerning the 



GIANT SEQUOIA PRESERVATION ACT 



H.R. 2153 



Before the House Agriculture Committee 



Subcommittee on Specialty Crops and Natural Resources 



9 March 1994 



Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. Thanl< you for inviting me to testify 

 before you today. The subject before us today, permanent protection of the Giant 

 Sequoias and the ecosystem that sustains them, is a cause to which I have dedicated 

 my time and my energy for the past 10 years. I strongly support H.R. 2153. 



I first visited Sequoia National Forest before I was two years old; ever since then the 

 Sierra Nevada has been important to me. This spectacular mountain range contains 

 the grandest, most diverse forest in the Pacific West; and crowning its glory are the 

 Giant Sequoias with their brilliant russet baric; they are the largest and nearly the 

 oldest living things on earth. 



An individual Giant Sequoia tree can live up to 3500 years, more than forty human 

 lifetimes. European man discovered the species in 1839, about three human lifetimes 

 ago; since that discovery, the future of Giant Sequoia groves and the chances for an 

 individual tree to survive to old age will depend not only upon all the forces of nature, 

 but upon the wisdom of each of 100 generations of human beings who will either 

 nurture or pillage the ecosystem upon which the Sequoia's life depends. Much as 

 Olympic runners pass the torch one to another, we must ensure that during our 

 generation's tenure we carry the fate of these magnificent forests with great care, that 

 we pass on to the next generation a Sequoia ecosystem which has begun to repair 

 itself from past human errors. We need to leave a permanent legislative legacy to 

 guide and to inspire those who follow. 



This ancient Sierra Nevada range, which John Muir called, 'The Range of Light," has 

 been important to my family since the turn of the century; my great grandfather was a 

 doctor in Porterville in the late 1800's. He and his family would ride horseback from 

 Porterville up the Tule River Canyon to visit his friend, John Nelson, at Camp Nelson. 

 Another of my great-grandfathers homesteaded near Porterville; his family camped 

 and hunted in the Sierra. My mother's father built a cabin in the Tule River Canyon in 

 1930. Our family has stayed there each summer since then; my daughter is the fifth 

 generation of my family to hike, fish, and ride horseback in this area. As a kid, I took for 

 granted the forest, the meadows and streams, the Giant Sequoia, and the creatures 

 that dwelled there; I knew it would all last forever. 



But, I was wrong. 



