[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 16 (Monday, April 24, 2000)]
[Pages 846-849]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 7295--Establishment of the Giant Sequoia National Monument

April 15, 2000

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    The rich and varied landscape of the Giant Sequoia National Monument 
holds a diverse array of scientific and historic resources. Magnificent 
groves of towering giant sequoias, the world's largest trees, are 
interspersed within a great belt of coniferous forest, jeweled with 
mountain meadows. Bold granitic domes, spires, and plunging gorges 
texture the landscape. The area's elevation climbs from about 2,500 to 
9,700 feet over a distance of only a few miles, capturing an 
extraordinary number of habitats within a relatively small area. This 
spectrum of ecosystems is home to a diverse array of plants and animals, 
many of which are rare or endemic to the southern Sierra Nevada. The 
monument embraces limestone caverns and holds unique paleontological 
resources documenting tens of thousands of years of ecosystem change. 
The monument also has many archaeological sites recording Native 
American occupation and adaptations to this complex landscape, and 
historic remnants of early Euroamerican settlement as well as the 
commercial exploitation of the giant sequoias. The monument provides 
exemplary opportunities for biologists, geologists, paleontologists, 
archaeologists, and historians to study these objects.
    Ancestral forms of giant sequoia were a part of the western North 
American landscape for millions of years. Giant sequoias are the largest 
trees ever to have lived, and are among the world's longest-lived trees, 
reaching ages of more than 3,200 years or more. Because of this great 
longevity, giant sequoias hold within their tree rings multi-millennial 
records of past environmental changes such as climate, fire regimes, and 
consequent forest response. Only one other North American tree species, 
the high-elevation bristlecone pine of the desert mountain ranges east 
of the Sierra Nevada, holds such lengthy and detailed chronologies of 
past changes and events.
    Sequoias and their surrounding ecosystems provide a context for 
understanding ongoing environmental changes. For example, a century of 
fire suppression has led to an unprecedented failure in sequoia 
reproduction in otherwise undisturbed groves. Climatic change also has 
influenced the sequoia groves; their present highly disjunct 
distribution is at least partly due to generally higher summertime 
temperatures and prolonged summer droughts in California from about 
10,000 to 4,500 years ago. During that period, sequoias were rarer than 
today. Only following a slight cooling and shortening of summer 
droughts, about 4,500 years ago, has the sequoia been able to spread and 
create today's groves.
    These giant sequoia groves and the surrounding forest provide an 
excellent opportunity to understand the consequences of different 
approaches to forest restoration. These forests need restoration to 
counteract the effects of a century of fire suppression and logging. 
Fire suppression has caused forests to become denser in many areas, with 
increased dominance of shade-tolerant species. Woody debris has 
accumulated, causing an unprecedented buildup of surface fuels. One of 
the most immediate consequences of these changes is an increased hazard 
of wildfires of a severity that was rarely encountered in pre-
Euroamerican times. Outstanding opportunities exist for studying the 
consequences of different approaches to mitigating these conditions and 
restoring natural forest resilience.
    The great elevational range of the monument embraces a number of 
climatic zones, providing habitats for an extraordinary diversity of 
plant species and communities. The monument is rich in rare plants and 
is home to more than 200 plant species endemic to the southern Sierra 
Nevada mountain range, arrayed in plant communities ranging from low-
elevation oak woodlands and chaparral to high-elevation subalpine 
forest. Numerous meadows and streams provide an interconnected web of 
habitats for moisture-loving species.

[[Page 847]]

    This spectrum of interconnected vegetation types provides essential 
habitat for wildlife, ranging from large, charismatic animals to less 
visible and less familiar forms of life, such as fungi and insects. The 
mid-elevation forests are dominated by massive conifers arrayed in a 
complex landscape mosaic, providing one of the last refugia for the 
Pacific fisher in California. The fisher appears to have been extirpated 
from the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The forests of the 
monument are also home to great gray owl, American marten, northern 
goshawk, peregrine falcon, spotted owl, and a number of rare amphibians. 
The giant sequoias themselves are the only known trees large enough to 
provide nesting cavities for the California condor, which otherwise must 
nest on cliff faces. In fact, the last pair of condors breeding in the 
wild was discovered in a giant sequoia that is part of the new monument. 
The monument's giant sequoia ecosystem remains available for the return 
and study of condors.
    The physiography and geology of the monument have been shaped by 
millions of years of intensive uplift, erosion, volcanism, and 
glaciation. The monument is dominated by granitic rocks, most noticeable 
as domes and spires in areas such as the Needles. The magnificent Kern 
Canyon forms the eastern boundary of the monument's southern unit. The 
canyon follows an ancient fault, forming the only major north-south 
river drainage in the Sierra Nevada. Remnants of volcanism are expressed 
as hot springs and soda springs in some drainages.
    Particularly in the northern unit of the monument, limestone 
outcrops, remnants of an ancient seabed, are noted for their caves. 
Subfossil vegetation entombed within ancient woodrat middens in these 
caves has provided the only direct evidence of where giant sequoias grew 
during the Pleistocene Era, and documents substantial vegetation changes 
over the last 50,000 or more years. Vertebrate fossils also have been 
found within the middens. Other paleontological resources are found in 
meadow sediments, which hold detailed records of the last 10 millennia 
of changing vegetation, fire regimes, and volcanism in the Sierra 
Nevada. The multi-millennial, annual- and seasonal-resolution records of 
past fire regimes held in giant sequoia tree-rings are unique worldwide.
    During the past 8,000 years, Native American peoples of the Sierra 
Nevada have lived by hunting and fishing, gathering, and trading with 
other people throughout the region. Archaeological sites such as lithic 
scatters, food-processing sites, rock shelters, village sites, 
petroglyphs, and pictographs are found in the monument. These sites have 
the potential to shed light on the roles of prehistoric peoples, 
including the role they played in shaping the ecosystems on which they 
depended.
    One of the earliest recorded references to giant sequoias is found 
in the notes of the Walker Expedition of 1833, which described ``trees 
of the redwood species, incredibly large . . . .'' The world became 
aware of giant sequoias when sections of the massive trees were 
transported east and displayed as curiosities for eastern audiences. 
Logging of giant sequoias throughout the Sierra Nevada mountain range 
began in 1856. Logging has continued intermittently to this day on 
nonfederal lands within the area of the monument. Early entrepreneurs, 
seeing profit in the gigantic trees, began acquiring lands within the 
present monument under the Timber and Stone Act in the 1880s. Today our 
understanding of the history of the Hume Lake and Converse Basin areas 
of the monument is supported by a treasure trove of historical 
photographs and other documentation. These records provide a unique and 
unusually clear picture of more than half a century of logging that 
resulted in the virtual removal of most forest in some areas of the 
monument. Outstanding opportunities exist for studying forest resilience 
to large-scale logging and the consequences of different approaches to 
forest restoration.
    Section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431) 
authorizes the President, in his discretion, to declare by public 
proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, 
and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated 
upon lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to 
be national monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, 
the limits of

[[Page 848]]

which in all cases, shall be confined to the smallest area compatible 
with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.
     Whereas  it appears that it would be in the public interest to 
reserve such lands as a national monument to be known as the Giant 
Sequoia National Monument:
     Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton,  President of the United 
States of America, by the authority vested in me by section 2 of the Act 
of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431), do proclaim that there 
are hereby set apart and reserved as the Giant Sequoia National 
Monument, for the purpose of protecting the objects identified in the 
above preceding paragraphs, all lands and interests in lands owned or 
controlled by the United States within the boundaries of the area 
described on the map entitled ``Proposed Giant Sequoia National 
Monument'' attached to and forming a part of this proclamation. The 
Federal land and interests in land reserved consist of approximately 
327,769 acres, which is the smallest area compatible with the proper 
care and management of the objects to be protected as identified in the 
above preceding paragraphs.
    All Federal lands and interests in lands within the boundaries of 
this monument are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from entry, 
location, selection, sale, leasing, or other disposition under the 
public land laws including, but not limited to, withdrawal from 
locating, entry, and patent under the mining laws and from disposition 
under all laws relating to mineral and geothermal leasing, other than by 
exchange that furthers the protective purposes of the monument. Lands 
and interests in lands within the boundaries of the monument not owned 
by the United States shall be reserved as a part of the monument upon 
acquisition of title thereto by the United States.
    The establishment of this monument is subject to valid existing 
rights.
    Timber sales under contract as of the date of the proclamation and 
timber sales with a decision notice signed after January 1, 1999, but 
prior to December 31, 1999, may be completed consistent with the terms 
of the decision notice and contract. No portion of the monument shall be 
considered to be suited for timber production, and no part of the 
monument shall be used in a calculation or provision of a sustained 
yield of timber from the Sequoia National Forest. Removal of trees, 
except for personal use fuel wood, from within the monument area may 
take place only if clearly needed for ecological restoration and 
maintenance or public safety.
    The Secretary of Agriculture shall manage the monument, along with 
the underlying Forest, through the Forest Service, pursuant to 
applicable legal authorities, to implement the purposes and provisions 
of this proclamation. The Secretary of Agriculture shall prepare, within 
3 years of this date, a management plan for this monument, and shall 
promulgate such regulations for its management as deemed appropriate. 
The plan will provide for and encourage continued public and 
recreational access and use consistent with the purposes of the 
monument.
    Unique scientific and ecological issues are involved in management 
of giant sequoia groves, including groves located in nearby and adjacent 
lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park 
Service. The Secretary, in consultation with the National Academy of 
Sciences, shall appoint a Scientific Advisory Board to provide 
scientific guidance during the development of the initial management 
plan. Board membership shall represent a range of scientific disciplines 
pertaining to the objects to be protected, including, but not 
necessarily limited to, the physical, biological, and social sciences.
    The Secretary, through the Forest Service, shall, in developing any 
management plans and any management rules and regulations governing the 
monument, consult with the Secretary of the Interior, through the Bureau 
of Land Management and the National Park Service. The final decision to 
issue any management plans and any management rules and regulations 
rests with the Secretary of Agriculture. Management plans or rules and 
regulations developed by the Secretary of the Interior governing uses 
within national parks or other national monuments administered by the 
Secretary of the Interior shall not apply within the Giant Sequoia 
National Monument.

[[Page 849]]

    The management plan shall contain a transportation plan for the 
monument that provides for visitor enjoyment and understanding about the 
scientific and historic objects in the monument, consistent with their 
protection. For the purposes of protecting the objects included in the 
monument, motorized vehicle use will be permitted only on designated 
roads, and nonmotorized mechanized vehicle use will be permitted only on 
designated roads and trails, except for emergency or authorized 
administrative purposes or to provide access for persons with 
disabilities. No new roads or trails will be authorized within the 
monument except to further the purposes of the monument. Prior to the 
issuance of the management plan, existing roads and trails may be closed 
or altered to protect the objects of interest in the monument, and 
motorized vehicle use will be permitted on trails until but not after 
December 31, 2000.
    Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to diminish or enlarge 
the jurisdiction of the State of California with respect to fish and 
wildlife management.
    There is hereby reserved, as of the date of this proclamation and 
subject to valid existing rights, a quantity of water sufficient to 
fulfill the purposes for which this monument is established. Nothing in 
this reservation shall be construed as a relinquishment or reduction of 
any water use or rights reserved or appropriated by the United States on 
or before the date of this proclamation.
    Laws, regulations, and policies pertaining to administration by the 
Department of Agriculture of grazing permits and timber sales under 
contract as of the date of this proclamation on National Forest System 
lands within the boundaries of the monument shall continue to apply to 
lands within the monument.
    Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to affect existing 
special use authorizations; existing uses shall be governed by 
applicable laws, regulations, and management plans.
    Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke any existing 
withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; however, the national 
monument shall be the dominant reservation.
    Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to 
appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument and 
not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.
     In Witness Whereof,  I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day 
of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand, and of the Independence 
of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-fourth.
                                            William J. Clinton

 [Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., April 24, 
2000]

 Note:  This proclamation will be published in the  Federal Register  on 
April 25.