233 



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P O. Box 307 

 Tehachapi CA 93561 

 March 1, 1994 



Sandra Key, Supervisor 

 Sequoia National Forest 

 900 West Grand Avenue 

 Porterville CA 93257 



Dear Sandra: 



At our last meeting to discuss the Mediated Settlement Agreement (MSA), you 

 expressed the opinion that the Giant Sequoia legislation supported by the Sierra Club 

 is contrary to the spirit of the MSA. As you know, I do not agree with this opinion. The 

 Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club has asked me to write this letter to clarify our 

 position on this issue and on other MSA related matters. 



I am a past president of the National Sierra Club; I served during the time Mineral 

 King was placed in Sequoia National Park. I am currently a member of the National 

 Sierra Club Board. I was one of the official Sierra Club representatives which 

 hammered out the provisions of the MSA. Just prior to the finalizing the MSA I recall 

 that the mediation parties discussed specifically whether or not the MSA would limit 

 the rights on any party to seek legislative changes. We agreed that the MSA did not 

 limit such activities. We have been seeking legislative changes in Forest Service 

 management, and the timber industry has pursued its lobbying to maximize the timber 

 cut. Neither of these activities is precluded by the MSA. 



When the MSA was signed three years ago it was the expectation of all parties that it 

 would take about two years to fully implement the MSA and to incorporate it into the 

 Land Management Plan(LMP)of the Forest. The mediation was a process of give and 

 take. We agreed to withdraw appeals and legal challenges to several timber sales 

 even though we believed them to be out of compliance with various laws and 

 regulations. In turn, the Forest Service agreed, among other things, to conduct several 

 studies to obtain the science needed to justify a permanent ASQ for the Forest. This 

 science had been lacking in the original LMP. The 75 MMBF annual cut agreed to in 

 the MSA was not based on science. It was based on a number arrived at by 

 bargaining across the table. Once the MSA required studies were done we expected 

 that the ASQ would be revisited in view of the new information. This was information 

 we felt the Forest Service should have already had obtained in the past in order to 

 conduct timber operations on the Forest. Based on our observations, we believed that 

 the studies would reveal that Sequoia National Forest had been cutting far too much 

 timber over the past several years and that the 75 MMBF was far too high. The new 



