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incompelence or ihe massive stale ofloviginv; ihal had lakcn place. 



Dnving ttirough tlic forest, as most of us do. gives little sense of how badly it is mismanaged. 

 It look a flighl over ihe foresl lo convince us. Few people realize ihal ihc limber harvest on 

 Sequoia Forest basically takes place on a small portion of the forest" s acreage. The major 

 timber producuig area of the forest is on a small plateau situated between Sequoia and Kings 

 Can>on Nahonal Parks, and on a single north-south running ridge that makes up the e.xtreme 

 south end of the Sierra Nevada. Virtually half the existing groves of Sequoia are in small pockets 

 in those two areas, sandwiched between clearcuts harvested over th< past two decades. 



L nlike the pnstme forests 1 sought out twenty years ago, many ofthe Groves I've visited in the 

 last several years have been raped or destroyed. There is no excuse for this destruction, and I 

 urge you to .ict quickly to preserve what remains. I'or any number of reasons, restoration projects 

 should begin now. 



It should not be difficult to convince you that the publicity and testimony ofthe opponents of 

 this legislation are misinformed. Those of us who are seeking protection for the Sequoias have 

 no intention of taking private in holdings, or even of overturning existing leases of cabins and 

 recreational permits on ihe foresi. UT DO BELIEVE TH.A.T }vLAN.A.GEME>rr OF THIS 

 FOREST FOR DISPERSED RECRE.A.TION .AND PROTECTION OF THE SEQUOLA. GO 

 H.-AND IN H.AND. We are NOT advocating turning this forest into a National .Monument which 

 would have eliminated hunting and some ORV use. We believe there is a place for in holdings, 

 lease holdings, hunting, fishing, and even ORV use m tiiis forest. 



What must stop now is the continued commercial harvest of timber on this forest. Please 

 understand that many of us who advocate this legislation are not opposed to the harvest of 

 timber from all national forest lands. Unfortunately, even though we may have believed initially 

 that a more limited sustained harvest might be possible on this forest, events of the past eight 

 years have proven otherwise. 



A number of independent .studies have estimated the sustainable yield of this forest to be 

 somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 million board feet of timber. Over the last several 

 decades timber hanest has proceeded at three to four times that rate. Since our initial suits and 

 protests, decades of limber needed for that sustained yield have already been harvested. Il is 

 time to say no more. Trees that would take a hundred years to grow in the northwest would 

 take at least fiRv years longer to grow here. The Southern Sierra is almost a desert. Five lo 

 seven straight years of drought easily destroy whole plantations of replacement trees. The Forest 

 Service and tunber industry lias continued to over-liai^'est tiie forest, and so we must insist that 

 no commercial harvest at all is the ONL"\' way to restore the forest. 



It is liard tor us. humans with less tlian one hundred year's lile span, to consider the lite span of 

 things still living that grew up before Clirisfs birth. I would invite each of you to come walk with 

 me amongst trees that were giants before Clinst's birth. 1 cannot believe you would liave so little 

 reverence for God's creation to not insist on tlieir preservation. 



When \ou are considering the vast size ofthe preserve, and worry of its size compared with 



