In May we visited Sequoia National Monument on our RV tour of the southwest and California, and were some of the first people into the reserve after the road opened outside of Kernville. We actually revisited a few more times when we got tired of surfing in San Diego and Santa Barbara and were needing a mountain fix. This video is a compilation of our time in this magnificent ecosystem, at a time of year when there were very few other people around. The monument is currently under review for a massive reduction in size and protections, which would provide jobs in the timber industry but would have impacts on the thriving tourism and recreation industries thriving as a result of the monuments recent expanded protections. The word is that if the monument is shrunk and stripped of current protections, the sequoias themselves would not be logged, but the forest around it would be clear cut. The timber industry insists this is necessary for proper forest health, while most forest scientists and conservationists believe would put further stress on a system already wracked by drought, disease, and fire. It is a passionate debate, but our feeling after visiting and researching the issue is that this special place should be returned to a natural state and that large-scale timber operations would not only be harmful to the fragile existence of the current stands, it would also not justify the relatively small number of jobs that would be created vs. the revenues and jobs that would be eliminated by exploiting this one-of-a-kind place.
