Today, House Committee on Natural Resources Ranking Member Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) hosted a bipartisan forum with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), U.S. Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and other members on saving America's Giant Sequoias.

"Not on our watch. We are not going to let these trees be destroyed by wildfire when we know how to prevent it. We know the right thing to do, we just have to do it. Thankfully, some of these right things have been done. We’re seeing it now in the Mariposa Grove where the fire dropped down. It got to these areas that had been managed and it dropped down," Westerman said during the forum. "We need urgent action. When you think of something that has been around for millennia, it’s sad that we’re to the point where we need to act within days or weeks. We don’t need to wait until next year. We need to be doing the work in the winter to prepare for next year’s fire season."

The panel of members heard from six witnesses during the forum:

The Honorable William Garfield, former chairman, Tule River Tribal Council
Matthew Reischman, deputy director of resource management, CAL FIRE
Denise England, grants and resources manager, County of Tulare, California
Kent Duysen, president, Sierra Forest Products
Joanna Nelson, director of science and conservation planning, Save The Redwoods League
Kristen Shive, forest and fuels specialist in cooperative extension, UC Berkeley (Fall 2022)

"H.R. 8168 introduced last month - the 'Save Our Sequoias Act' - is a long-overdue effort to empower resourceful experts and stewards to employ critical resiliency efforts to combat the very real threat of fire that plagues roughly 70 Sequoia groves as drought conditions increase," Garfield said. "We recognize that there are currently few long-term drought solutions in place in the area to protect our forest and lands - so we must work together to save our sequoias. The Tule River Tribe is proud to support the passage of the Save the Sequoias Act. We are genuinely committed to contribute our Traditional Ecological Knowledge of forest management practices that has kept the Giant Sequoias - true national treasures, in our presence for thousands of years. Our Traditional Ecological Knowledge is science and we appreciate that the legislation not only acknowledges this, but requires it."

"The current risks to giant sequoia ecosystems come not from a single threat, but the convergence of multiple threats at the same point in time," Reischman said. "Fire exclusion, drought, bark beetles, and hotter, drier climate conditions have significantly changed our forest over the last decade. These have set the stage for wildfires to move through giant sequoia groves uncontrolled and with unacceptable impacts."

"Our county has been covered in smoke for the past five summers due to wildfires," England said. "We have lost more than 1,000 Monarch Giant Sequoias, which cannot be replaced within the next three generations. Change must occur. NEPA and ESA reform is crucial to saving the remaining Giant Sequoia groves. A full toolbox, with operable tools, must be provided to the Forest Service and others to achieve active forest management to reduce wildfire risk and create healthy ecosystems. Returning prescribed fire to the land, allowing mechanical operations where effective and efficient, and utilizing forest products to remove the material off the land are critical in protecting these giants."

"In the 1980s we worked on three or four Forest Service sales that thinned the white woods from the Giant Sequoia groves," Duysen said. "When we finished the projects, the groves looked like a park. The Forest Service put seedlings back into the groves, which included young giant sequoias. There was also natural regeneration that sprouted. From a personal perspective, it makes me sick to see the conditions of our groves: black, and if they haven't burned, so overgrown they are ripe to burn in the next fire."

"At the time of our organization’s founding, the major threats to these ancient giants was logging," Nelson said. "Today, wildfires – exacerbated by drought, climate change, and practices of fire exclusion – are occurring at a frequency and severity that, if allowed to continue at the current rate, could wipe out our irreplaceable and magnificent giant sequoia groves. Although Giant Sequoia evolved with low- to moderate-intensity fire, and in fact need fire to reproduce, today’s wildfires are killing large, mature trees, which is largely unprecedented."

"If you look at a 1,400-year fire history record, fire frequencies did vary with climate. They were getting longer, further apart during cooler, wetter periods, but even then, over 1,400 years the longest fire free period was 30 years," Shive said. "Keeping fire out of these forests for well over 100 years has truly created anomalous and hazardous forest conditions."