242 



Wartin Litton 



180 Bear Gulch Drive 



Portola Valley, California 94028 



(415) 851-2616 



STATEMENT BEFORE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

 SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPECIALTY CROPS AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

 March 9, 1994 



I am Martin Litton, of Portola Valley, California. I am a third-generation 

 Californian with sixty years of experience in the Sequoia and Sierra national 

 forests and environs. 



My alarm over the fate of Sequoia National Forest is mostly the result of the 

 surge of logging and logging roads in the past thirty years and the logging 

 of groves of giant sequoias which began ten years ago. 



The area of the Giant Sequoia National Forest Preserve is in two congressional 

 districts. Ihe smaller part is in the district represented by Mr. Lehman, 

 and the larger part is in the district represented by Mr. Thomas. But the 

 owners of Sequoia and Sierra national forests — all of whom share ownership 

 equally — are the citizens of 435 congressional districts, and many of them 

 are constituents of members of this committee. It is interesting to 

 contemplate how they would vote on the felling and hauling away of what John 

 Muir called "the noblest forest of the world." 



And make no mistake about it: That forest is going down — half of its most 

 desirable timber gone in thirty years — and it is not coming back. Where the 

 ground is not too steep or rocky to plant, the wishful thinking is that the 

 seedlings of a single species — ponderosa pine, in nature a distinct minority 

 among the diverse trees of old-growth forest at those elevations — will grow 

 to pole size in 140 years so they can be cut and utilized by whatever 

 civilization may be around at that time. (After all, if you go back 140 

 years , you ' re ahead of the Civil War . ) With that kind of a "rotation , " one 

 must wonder what happens in the century or so of waiting for the next "crop." 



If I may judge by the license plates I see, your constituents have high regard 

 for their public property in the Far West, which they visit and enjoy in great 

 numbers. We Americans love our scenic federal lands — so much so, as you have 

 observed, that we are loving some of them to death. Demand often crowds them 

 beyond their capacities. 



Situated as they are, within a few hours' drive of the homes of some thirty 

 million people in California alone, the national parks of the Sierra Nevada — 

 Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia — can hardly remain what they were first 

 meant to be: "pleasuring-grounds for the people." The public's ever-growing 

 need for the native beauty and wonder of America the Beautiful is met by an 

 ever-diminishing resource. 



In 1890, Sequoia became our second national park, created to save an example 



