If you love trees, please help slow climate change. Write to your lawmakers about this crisis and hold industry accountable. Oppose logging on our public lands and be sure to support local preservation efforts.
Most of us never get to see a forest with its full compliment of trees intact. We live in an impoverished world and don’t even realize it. Logging creates an unnatural, imbalanced forest which may never fully recover, certainly not in our lifetimes. Logging also releases carbon, increases heat, dries out the forest, increases wind (which is required to drive severe fire), and results in a highly flammable, unnatural landscape of shrubs, weeds, and tiny trees (not to mention impacts on wildlife). Wildfire is necessary in the sequoia forests, and contrary to what is often repeated without a second thought, it does not burn more intensely due to a density of trees. In fact, cleared areas actually cause an increase in the speed and severity of fire, due to the removal of natural windbreaks.
We need to focus on the real issues. The giant sequoias aren’t getting the snowpack they need due to a rise in temperature and aridity. All trees aren’t getting the moisture they need due to the increase in heat drying things out too quickly. The only way to help fix this is to address climate change.
