In fact, giant sequoias need fairly frequent fires (at least a few a
century, if not more often) to propagate their progeny. Without the
heat of a fire, the scales of their cones will not open to release the
seeds, and the mineral soil and open forest they require to germinate
will not be available.

Sequoia trees are not only generally unharmed by fire due to their
thick and only lightly flammable bark, their existence depends upon the
heat of the flames. Intense fuel reduction in their groves is
tantamount to forced local extinction.

Similar cases are true for other kinds of trees; Sequoiadendron
Giganteum is just the most dramatic example.

The Giant Sequoia National Monument, which is an entirely different
entity from Sequoia National Park, is also run in a different way.
Unlike the park, which is run by NPS/Dept. of the Interior, whose
mission and goal is to protect the resource unimpaired, it is run by
the Forest Service, which has traditionally been a multiple-use and
harvesting agency (except in wilderness areas, where preservation
policies are generally stronger). The monument, which preserves most
of the remaining sequoia groves not in the parks, also contains a good
deal of intermixed and buffer forest, normally the Forest Service's
bread and butter when it comes to harvest. I do not envy the Forest
Service's resource specialists in this monument - they have a tougher
time in many ways than the Park Service, who merely has to protect, or
the regular national forests, where preservation is rarely practiced
ona large scale and rapacious harvest can often be done with impunity.
In the Monument, resource specialists have the balancing act of their
lives when they must protect the Sequoia groves *and* provide for some
level of harvest. These two conflicting goals give them an
overwhelming management obstacle, both politically and in terms of the
resource itself.

When walking through some of the the groves in the Monument, it gives
an odd feeling to walk among standing sequoia trees with little in
between but low shrubs and grasses, compared to what one finds in the
fully protected groves such as Giant Forest or Grant Grove or Redwood
Mountain Grove. One wonders how much the longevity of the sequoia is
owed to the presence of a forest around it to protect from the
battering of strong winds in Sierra storms or the direct baking summer
sun upon its entire root system. Time will tell, I suppose. One of
the oddest groves is Converse Basin, where the Boole Tree, a very large
old sequoia named for the foreman of the lumber company, stands alone
among a few 100-year old trees and bushes. It is about the most
incongruous sight I have seen, only matched by a few similar spots in
the Pacific Northwest where single old giant redcedars have been
preserved in the midst of what looks like a war zone.

Other recently-established national monuments, including Mt. St. Helens
National Volcanic in WA and Grand Staircase-Escalante in UT, have been
modelled on similar frameworks, although St. Helens gets a stronger
preservation component than some. If you have never been to these
three National Monuments, I urge you to go - they are spectacular,
fascinating and have enormous rewards to offer.

Bruce Jensen