The Packsaddle Giant Sequoia Grove in the Giant Sequoia National Monument, after being “saved.” Credit: Adam Bronstein
On Wednesday, September 30th, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is marking up dozens of pieces of legislation, including dim-bulb Republican bills to reverse light-bulb efficiency standards (S. 1568, the “Liberating Incandescent Technology” Act), to authorize off-road vehicles in Capitol Reef National Park (S. 2970), and to short-circuit the Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals (H.R. 677, the “Expedited Appeals Review” Act).
But the legislation that induces gut-clenching horror is a bipartisan bill championed by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the Orwellian “Save Our Sequoias” Act (S. 4103/H.R. 2709). This legislation, which would authorize the mass clear-cutting of giant sequoia groves in Yosemite National Park and Giant Sequoia National Monument in the name of wildfire “resilience” via “thinning,” has been a top priority of California’s logging industry for years.
To be clear, the clear-cutting of giant sequoia groves in Yosemite National Park and Giant Sequoia National Monument has already begun.
“The Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition (GSLC), comprised of federal and California land management agencies and other entities financially involved in logging, is currently clearcutting old-growth stands, conducting large post-fire clearcut logging projects, and logging huge trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument, and Yosemite National Park, within and adjacent to giant sequoia groves,” writes wildfire scientist Chad Hanson. “They are doing this with limited or no environmental analysis or public participation, and often no public notice at all. And much more of this will happen, in many more giant sequoia groves, if the deceptive and profoundly dangerous logging bill promoted by the GSLC, the so-called Save Our Sequoias Act, is passed by the U.S. Senate.”
Fossil-fueled (and logging-fueled) global warming is increasing extreme wildfires, which is being sold an existential threat to sequoias. But wildfire ecologists have found that sequoia groves are not only resilient to intense fires, they need high-intensity fire to regenerate. The present existential threat to sequoias are the loggers.
“Restoration” logging in the Packsaddle Grove, within the Giant Sequoia National Monument, burned in the 2020 Castle Fire. Credit: John Muir Project.
Hanson explains the canards of the sequoia-slashing propaganda machine:
Aside from the Congressional Republicans and Democrats who are squarely in the logging industry’s pocket, how did so many others get snowed and misled?
The answer is that GSLC member entities, and associated logging industry advocacy organizations, have been running an aggressive disinformation and propaganda campaign to prop up the political narrative that they concocted to keep vast sums of public funds flowing from taxpayer coffers into their pockets to subsidize their destructive activities. The GSLC’s false narrative would have us believe that recent wildfires have destroyed large portions of giant sequoia groves, and that logging, intensive herbicide (glyphosate) spraying, and industrial tree plantations are needed supposedly to prevent or curb future fires and “reforest” giant sequoia groves. In particular, the GSLC claims that giant sequoias are incapable of regenerating in high-intensity fire patches, especially large high-intensity fire patches with substantial areas of crown fire, where the flames reached the tops of the trees.
These are lies.
“In fact, there is abundant, rapidly-growing giant sequoia regeneration in large, intense crown fire patches,” Hanson writes. “In contrast, giant sequoias cannot effectively reproduce in lower-intensity surface fire areas, like prescribed burns.”
Natural sequoia regeneration in the high-severity burn area of the Redwood Mountain Grove, Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness. Credit: René Voss.
Hanson, who works with the John Muir Project of the Earth Island Institute, responded to the September 16th ENR hearing on the bill with a litany of the ecocidal activities of the GSLC, an enterprise seemingly built to emulate the Once-ler:
Recently, the GSLC, which was created by the Biden Administration, has gotten even worse in the Trump Administration. Here are just a few among many examples:
The GSLC just clearcut a portion of the iconic Mariposa Giant Sequoia Grove in Yosemite National Park, logging many huge old-growth trees and selling them to logging companies.
The GSLC claimed that imperiled Condors, Fishers, and Spotted Owls would not use the recent fire areas, and supposedly would not be impacted by post-fire logging, but all three species have been found actively using and inhabiting these fire areas, including the high-intensity patches. Our research, based on the government’s own Condor GPS tracking data, documented that dozens of endangered Condors are now preferentially selecting high-intensity fire patches in the Sequoia Monument—the very same areas targeted by the GSLC for logging.
The GSLC has recently been deliberately cutting and killing large swaths of natural giant sequoia regeneration in high-intensity fire patches, throwing the killed sequoia saplings into many hundreds of huge slash piles, and incinerating them with the public funds they have been receiving. In just one grove, Freeman Creek, our team of scientists found the GSLC has already killed 158,000 young sequoia trees.
Logging and wood chips in Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, May 2026. Credit: Nick Scrithfield
After the markup, the Slaughter Our Sequoias Act will be folded into the Farm Bill (fH.R. 7567)—formally, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.
The MAGA Farm Bill is an abomination, locking in the One Big Brutal Bill’s food-stamp cuts, protecting the worst practices and subsidies of industrial agriculture, and significantly increasing logging of national forests. In the dead of night on April 29th, the House attached the Slaughter Our Sequoias Act to the Farm Bill by voice vote, and then passed the mega-package the next morning with the support of 14 Democrats.
The Senate has been moving slowly in the same direction, getting the core package out of the Agriculture Committee on September 16th, thanks to the return of Sen. Mitch McConnell, restoring a Republican majority on the panel. After prodding by his staff, McConnell croaked out an “aye” in a shambolic vote during which Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) steamrolled Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) attempt to call up an amendment to the bill. Ernst voted to report the bill anyway.
The Farm Bill is expected to be one of the Senate’s top lame-duck priorities after the midterm elections, with October being reserved for lobbyists (and legislators) to hammer out a deal that can get through both houses with outgoing membership.
Call the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to stop the “Save Our Sequoias” Act (S. 4103) today.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee number: (202) 224-4971
Committee Democrats:
Ranking Member Heinrich (N.M.) (202) 224-5521
Sponsor Padilla (Calif.) (202) 224-3553
Ron Wyden (Ore.) (202) 224-5244
Maria Cantwell (Wash.) (202) 224-3441
Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) (202) 224-6361
Angus King (Maine) (202) 224-5344
Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) (202) 224-3542
John Hickenlooper (Colo.) (202) 224-5941
Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) (202) 224-4521
Hill Heat’s U.S. Climate Politics Almanac is made available to the public thanks to our paid subscribers. Join their ranks today and grow the movement:
