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158 



U. S. House of Representatives 



Committee on Agriculture 



Subcommittee on Specialty Crops and Natural Resources 



H. R. 2153 

 The Giant Sequoia Preservation Act 



Comments of Dr. Philip W. Rundel 



Department of Biology and Laboratory of Biomedical and 



Environmental Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 



90024 



March 5, 1994 



Giant Sequoias as a Species 



Exploration of the Sierra Nevada by American "Mountain Men" in the mid 19th 

 century brought news to the world of a remarkable tree, a Giant Sequoia, of 

 unbelievable size and beauty. Small groves of these trees growing in the 

 montane zone along the west slope of the mountains quickly became a magnet 

 for visitors from all over the world who travelled to California to see these 

 unbelievable giants. In the simpler times of this era with seemingly 

 inexhaustible natural resources, little thought was given to resource 

 management or protection of the Giant Sequoia resource. Roads were laid, 

 hotels built, and individual Giant Sequoias cut or stripped of their bark for 

 shows. State laws protecting large giant sequoias from harm were passed in 

 California in 1873, but largely ignored with extensive lumbering carried out in 

 several grove areas at the end of the century. 



Protection of Giant Sequoia resources became an increasingly important goal 

 as lumbering continued, and public pressure brought to bear by John Muir, the 

 Sierra Club, and others led to the establishment of National Park preserves for 

 the preservation of Giant Sequoias and surrounding forest communities on the 

 west slope of the Sierra Nevada. Sequoia and General Grant National Parks 

 were established in 1890 were established largely for this purpose and 

 Yosemite National Park also protected three smaller Giant Sequoia groves. 

 Subsequent additions to these parks up through recent years has helped 

 improve this protection by adding larger landscape units to these preserves. 

 Today, the 75 existing groves of Giant Sequoia are largely in public ownership, 

 but the policies of resource management being applied to these groves has 

 varied greatly between government agencies. 



Eariy resource management of Giant Sequoias was largely focused on fire 

 protection. Since fires were thought to be potential causes of mortality to large 

 specimen trees, and produced what were considered aesthetically unpleasant 

 fire scars on the fibrous red bari< of Giant Sequoias, every attempt was made to 

 eliminate fire as factor in the Giant Sequoia groves. By the 1960*s, however. 



