Now, Big Trees State Park, where California settlers first discovered giant sequoias in 1852, is threatened by clear-cutting on its borders. Timber industry officials say that clear-cutting makes for healthier, more productive forests. Most environmentalists counter that the higher production comes at great cost to wildlife, habitat and the water supplies humans and animals depend upon. What is indisputable is that clear-cutting is exploding in California, provoking a legislative showdown next week that may force Gov. Gray Davis to choose between environmentalists who once endorsed him and a timber industry that now bankrolls him. But he admits that Davis tends to see forestry issues through an industry-friendly lens.
Trees are just big, tall crops.
Sierra Pacific Industries owns a whopping 1.5 million acres of California's forests, mainly in the Sierra Nevada. Data gathered by the Department of Forestry, however, reveals that Sierra Pacific's reliance on clear-cutting has skyrocketed over the past 10 years. While the company's landholdings roughly doubled, its clear-cutting increased by a factor of 24, to nearly 24,000 acres a year. Sierra Pacific has also become more politically active. Like most of the timber industry, it backed Republican Dan Lundgren in the 1998 governor's race.