Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has recommended that 355,000 acres of national forest be given monument status to safeguard about half the giant sequoia groves remaining in the United States.
“These are really precious jewels of the American geography,” Glickman said Friday.
Monument status would give them “a long-term, even permanent protection for the benefit of the American people to come.”
The recommendation will now go to President Clinton, who is expected to approve it under the 1906 Antiquities Act.
In the last year of his presidency, Clinton has increasingly been using the act, which allows him to create national monuments on federal lands without congressional approval.
He has protected more land using the act in the contiguous 48 states than has any other president.
The efforts in Sequoia National Forest, part of which is used for logging, have met with opposition.
In an effort to block Clinton, three members of Congress from California have drafted legislation that would require an 18-month study by the National Academy of Science on how best to protect the trees.
Rep. Bill Thomas, a Republican sponsor of the bill, has said the president is “declaring war” on communities closest to the forests.
During debate on the measure last month, supporters of the legislation acknowledged it was unlikely to pass before Clinton acted.
While the legislators agree the trees should be protected, they argue that cutbacks on logging in the national forest would cost millions of dollars in lost jobs and would also be shortsighted.
They say timber operations protect the sequoias by thinning out the undergrowth and smaller trees surrounding them and protecting them from fire and pest infestation.
Under Glickman’s proposal, any future arrangements for logging within the boundaries of the monument would be outlawed, but logging deals already negotiated would continue while logging is phased out during the next 2 years.
