Clinton is expected to announce a decision this month on whether to use his executive authority to make the designation. Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Resources Committee, issued the following statement at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday morning. We are here today to call on President Clinton to protect an irreplaceable treasure in California's southern Sierra Nevada mountains. We believe the President understands the breadth of support for environmental protection throughout this country, reflected in part by the 600,000 post cards the Sierra Club is delivering to Congress and the White House today calling for protection of the giant sequoias. We applaud the President's leadership in the face of congressional and administrative inaction, and we hope that he will create a giant sequoia national monument that will at last offer permanent protection to these unique trees.
Giant sequoias rank among the oldest and tallest living things on earth.
Without human interference, these trees have survived for thousands of years. When the Forest Service irresponsibly allowed logging in and around sequoia groves in the 1980's, it caused severe degradation to an ecosystem that had thrived for centuries. It took lawsuits and a public outcry to stop the destruction. Today, these spectacular trees and the ecosystem on which they depend are still not permanently protected. Republicans on the Committee will claim that this issue needs to be studied by the National Academy of Sciences.