In 2022, a group of us were on our way back from a congressional delegation trip overseas when Rep. Bruce Westerman (AR-04) asked if he could sit down with me and tell me about threats to California’s iconic sequoia trees. After Rep. Westerman studied engineering at the University of Arkansas, he got a graduate degree from the Yale School of Forestry. He almost certainly knows more about forestry than anyone else in Congress.   

He told me that until 2017, we had not lost a Giant Sequoia to fire for 1,200 years. The trees have thick and spongy bark and tall branches that make them highly resilient to fire, insects, and disease.  

But in recent years, poor forest management and oversuppression of natural fire have posed a new threat. Fir and pine trees – which used to die off and be removed after natural, less severe fires – have grown up next to the sequoias and have conveyed flames into the tree canopy, where sequoias have no protection. In the past decade, we have lost 20 percent of all Giant Sequoias in this way. 

I was shocked to hear this, and I asked Rep. Westerman if I could work with him to save these natural treasures.   

In May of 2022, we led a bipartisan delegation to visit Sequoia National Park and learn more about how wildfires and unnatural conditions threaten the future of sequoia trees. Together, with that group, we then wrote the Save Our Sequoias Act. 

To save the trees, we needed to restore the conditions that would have existed had natural fire not been prevented over the past century. That meant removing the extra fuel in the sixty-plus groves where the sequoias grow. Congress needs to provide direction, permission and money to do this work, and we need to get it done fast, before we lose more trees.   

Those are the basics of the Save our Sequoias Act.   

1. We clear the extra fuel from the groves to prevent more losses.   

2. We provide for expedited environmental review; the trees don’t have time for us to do a multi-year study of each grove before acting. The SOS Act declares an emergency to codify existing emergency procedures, streamline environmental reviews, and maintain robust scientific analysis to accelerate necessary forest treatments.  

3. We strengthen coordination between those involved with the sequoias -- federal, state, tribal, and local land managers -- through shared stewardship agreements and the creation of the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition, a partnership among current Giant Sequoia managers. 

4. We track our progress through a Giant Sequoia Health and Resiliency Assessment to prioritize forest management projects, track progress, and ensure ongoing study of the trees' health and resiliency over time.  

5. We replant to make up for the trees we’ve already lost. The bill establishes a comprehensive reforestation strategy to regenerate Giant Sequoias in groves destroyed by recent wildfires, helping to ensure the long-term survival of these majestic trees.   

   
   

• My 2022 op-ed on this topic provides even more detail on how the SOS Act would address this crisis.