243 



of America's native glory from the fate of the greatest of all sequoia 

 forests, in the Converse Basin nearby, which was then undergoing destruction 

 on an almost unimaginable scale. But the original park, centered on the 

 still-wild Garfield Grove, did not even embrace Giant Forest, site of the 

 General Sherman Tree. The park was enlarged several times, to almost ten 

 times its original size, then joined in 1940 by Kings Canyon National Park, 

 a detached section of which contains sequoias. 



Yet even today, all of the protected sequoia acreage in those parks, as well 

 as in Yosemite, in state and county lands, on BLW sites, in private ownership— 

 in short, all of the protected sequoia ownership in the world — does not amount 

 to one-third of the area occupied by unprotected sequoia groves on the Sequoia 

 National Forest, most of which have been subjected to destructive logging in 

 the past ten years at the. expense of the Nation's taxpayers. 



Not only do your constituents own the Forest, but they pay the bills. The 

 felling, hauling, and milling jobs declining in numbers as the available 

 timber declines, are funded out of the pockets of Americans all across the 

 continent, who unknowingly have their heritage squandered and pay to have it 

 done. 



And when they come to see their forest, they find their access to major groves 

 denied by locked gates. 



The Preserve will be neither a wilderness nor a national park. Its injuries 

 are too severe for a "quick fix." It will be the first thing of its kind in 

 the national forest system — a recovery project designed to let natural 

 processes do most of the work, and to provide outdoor space hospitable to 

 people's needs in these times of ever-more-confined recreational opportunity. 



E\inds no longer used to subsidize timber sales will be ample to pay for 

 forestry-skilled labor — labor needed to repair the damage and to make up for 

 past errors: e. g. seventy years of fire suppression leading to dangerous 

 accumulations of fuels which now must be removed, the land will be allowed — 

 and helped — to heal. 



Note that the boundaries are logical, embracing land related to sequoia growth, 

 influencing it, or influenced by it. Actually, much of the Preserve has not 

 been tree-clad in historic time, but all of it is essential for fish and 

 wildlife migration, shelter, and breeding; scenic quality, life- zone sequence, 

 all-year accessibility, trail continuity, and the microclimate on which the 

 forest depends — yes, clearly depends: Remove the natural canopy and you've 

 sent the southern Sierra Nevada further along its way to a barren end. 



It is worth remembering that every argument used in opposition to H. R. 2153 

 could be used for dismantling the Sierra Nevada's national parks, where 

 cutting down the trees would provide quite a few jobs — for a while. With 

 H. R. 2153, we now have the chance to do what we should have done a century 

 ago — put our strength into husbanding a treasure beyond price. It won't be 

 what it was, but we mvist give it every chance. 



We now have an instrument by which we can bring the domain of the giant 

 sequoia back to health. People who live in that domain or near it will find 

 their properties more secure and valuable in an environment that is not 



