Other Environmental Themes

A Monument to Trees Majestic

“Do behold the King Sequoia,” the naturalist John Muir wrote some 140 years ago. “Behold! Behold! seems all I can say… For is he not the greatest light in the woods, in the world?” To protect these vast “columns of sunshine” and “the greatest of all living things,” which is how Muir referred to giant sequoias, he helped establish Sequoia National Park, which was founded in 1890 in the southern Sierra Nevadas. Two years later, Muir started the Sierra Club, which placed the giant sequoia in the center of its very first “seal,” or logo. These majestic trees—the world’s largest in terms of bulk and among the most ancient (one measured at about 3,500 years old)—have remained central to the Sierra Club’s agenda, just as they’ve remained a central element of the club’s logo since its founding.

Sequoia National Park only preserves about 40 percent of the world’s remaining giant sequoias. In 2000, President Bill Clinton established the 328,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument next door to the park to safeguard another 50 percent of the existing trees. (The remaining 10 percent lie on Indian reservations and a mix of private and public land.) The proclamation signed by President Clinton banned commercial logging within the monument, offering what was supposed to be permanent protection. But the Sierra Club’s job is not yet done, as the trees that John Muir held in awe have had to withstand a steady series of barrages. And the monument intended to protect them is, itself, on the group’s list of “most important places to protect.”

In 2001, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups blocked a lawsuit filed by logging interests aimed at dismantling the monument altogether. In 2005, the Bush Administration wanted to allow commercial logging in the monument, in defiance of Clinton’s original proclamation. The Sierra Club and others intervened again, thwarting the administration’s plans.”

In the meantime, the Sierra Club would like to see the monument become part of Sequoia National Park. The group is unhappy with the Forest Service’s stewardship, particularly its longstanding policy of fire suppression. The group believes that fires must be allowed to burn in a controlled fashion in order to restore the forest’s health. “It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods,” John Muir wrote, “trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra.” If Muir’s vision is fulfilled, and that of the environmental organization he founded, trees of this sort will still be standing 3,000 years later and in the centuries to come.