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President Clinton visits the new Sequoia National Monument. (Image source: USDA.)
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April 2000
Porterville, CA
Taking the initiative to preserve an increasingly rare resource, President Clinton has declared a new Giant Sequoia National Monument to protect Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron gigantea) in 328,000 acres of California's Sequoia National Forest. These trees are the largest, and some of the oldest, on earth.
The monument will protect the giant trees from logging and development, but it will allow continued hiking, camping, river rafting, and other forms of nonmotorized recreational activities. The largest of the trees exceed 3,000 years in age and 30 feet in diameter (90 feet in circumference) and hundreds of feet in height. Only about 75 groves of these trees remain, all on the western slopes of California's central and southern Sierra Nevada mountains. Millions of years ago, they ranged across much of North America and parts of Asia.
The president has legal authority to establish national monuments for the preservation of precious resources under the 1906 Antiquities Act.
To learn more, see these related websites:
Announcement from the USDA/Department of the Interior
Sierra Club: local chapter website on Sequoia National Monument
Natural Resources Defense Council report
To read more, see:
Environmental Science, A Global Concern, Cunningham and Saigo, 6th ed.
Redwood National Park (California), p. 19
Redwoods, pp. 287, 318
Old-growth forests, pp. 302-3
Environmental Science, A Study of Interrelationships, Enger and Smith, 7th ed.
ForestsÑold growth, p. 17
National forests, p. 226
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