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Saturday , April 22, 2000 A
Sequoia Monument PRESIDENT CLINTON'S decision to create a 327,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument in central California won't change the rules regarding the remaining trees as much as some of the surrounding publicity suggested, but it was a welcome act nonetheless. The 70-odd groves that make up the monument already are part of either the national park or national forest systems, and a Bush administration executive order created buffer zones around the forest tracts. The new proclamation would significantly extend those zones, and the Forest Service is ordered to manage the combined area protectively for the benefit of the trees. That's as it ought to be. The ancient giants are magnificent, irreplaceable specimens. For 150 years, they have been wantonly cut down, until only a relative few remain. They are, in that sense, emblematic of the national forests generally, a depleted resource that it is time--past time--to protect rather than continue to despoil. To its credit, the administration is trying to change the way the forests are managed--raise the bar so that the burden of justification falls on those who would continue to cut instead of on those who would conserve. The policy is as wise as it is politically difficult to impose. The president ordered the monument designation under the so-called Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to set aside without the usual congressional approval federal lands containing "objects of historic and scientific interest." When he used the same authority to set aside an expanse of land in southern Utah several years ago, some in Congress vowed to repeal it. But this is a valuable statute; it provided the early protection for what have since become some of the most important national parks. Mr. Clinton's use of it has likewise been benign; the act, like the sequoias, ought to be preserved. © 2000 The Washington Post Company |