Club Members Continue to Save Our Sequoias

While redwoods and sequoias are different species, these national treasures face a common threat—which is why the Boone and Crockett Club supports the Save Our Sequoias Act.

When Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir camped among the most enormous trees in North America, they talked of some of the most important conservation policies this nation has ever known. Our national forests provide generational benefits to wildlife, our economy, and the climate, but they face new threats every year, including wildfires, disease outbreaks, and chronic overcrowding. New policies are needed to conserve our most treasured wildlife, wild places, and natural resources. Many of our federal forests are in poor ecological health due to a lack of active management, climate change, a century of fire suppression, and decades of controversy about how to best manage them. Active forest management is necessary to create more resilient wildlife habitat and to protect iconic species from further decline.  

President Roosevelt in Big King Grove, 1903.

In the summer of 2022, catastrophic wildfires threatened groves of giant sequoias in California. At that time, the U.S. Forest Service initiated emergency forest treatments to reduce the immediate threat of fires in California’s groves of giant sequoias. These actions included removing “surface” and “ladder” fuels, which include flammable materials on the forest floor and slightly larger woody debris that help a fire grow in size or intensity. The bipartisan Save Our Sequoias Act would address the immediate threats to this iconic species, ensuring that the Forest Service has the tools to continue mitigating the threat of wildfires.  

But this is about much more than iconic species. It’s about active forest and rangeland health nationwide, which is at the heart of the Boone and Crockett Club’s policy agenda. When the Save Our Sequoias Act was introduced in June 2022, Boone and Crockett Club Chief Executive Officer Tony Schoonen offered the following comments: 

“The Boone and Crockett Club supports the Forest Service actions today to immediately start work to protect the iconic sequoia groves in California from wildfire using its long-standing emergency authorities. Our national forests are overstocked across the West, and the Forest Service is taking proactive measures to restore forests to healthy conditions. The Boone and Crockett Club, likewise, is working to advance funding and authorities to accelerate projects on the ground.” 

While these actions were critical to saving several giant sequoia groves, they could also help reduce fires across the rest of our national forests. The Save Our Sequoias Act provides a blueprint for future policy reforms, and the Boone and Crockett Club is proud to support it alongside our partners.

USDA Forest Service photos at top by Teresa Benson (left) and  Jamie Hinrichs (right).