A US Forest Service plan to log part of the Sierra Nevada inhabited by some of America’s oldest trees has angered environmentalists.
The proposal, designed to reduce the risk of wildfire following a serious blaze in 2001, would see the cutting of enough commercial timber to fill 3,000 logging trucks a year.
Felling is planned in 300,000 acres surrounding 34 groves of giant sequoias, an area named as a national monument by President Clinton in his last year of office. About 10 million board feet of lumber could be cut a year by commercial loggers.
The Forest Service says the felling is the best way to protect the groves from wildfire and spur the regeneration of sequoias.
Environmentalists say fire risk needs to be addressed but claim that the high level of logging would ridicule the areas’s status as a national monument.
