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Related: About this forumClimate change could wipe out iconic California landmarks
Climate change could wipe out iconic California landmarks
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/09/06/sequoia-trees-threatened-climate-change-california-elam-pkg-lead-vpx.cnn
The Lead
Almost everything about a sequoia tree is giant, yet the iconic tree's footprint is shrinking. As CNN's Stephanie Elam reports, human-induced climate change threatens this ancient tree's survival.
Source: CNN
hatrack
(59,439 posts)EDIT
These splendid trees, rising to heights of more than 300 feet, flourish in a narrow coastal zone influenced by the Pacific Ocean fog. They were an early causes for conservationists, who formed the Save-the-Redwoods League in 1913, embarked on a fund-raising campaign, and persuaded the Legislature to create three redwood state parks encompassing 27,500 acres.
The league donated half the land, and the state purchased the remainder from the lumber companies. This was an impressive achievement, but the parks were tiny in relation to the remaining redwood habitat of 1.5 million acres, reduced by logging to one-tenth its original size. Lumber companies, including Pacific Lumber, had their eyes on the surviving old-growth redwoods, which are more resistant than younger trees to rot and decay. A single redwood 2,000 years old yields 480,000 board feet of lumber.
The lumber companies had long opposed a national redwoods park. By the time Reagan took office, however, the industry had retreated under conservationist fire to the more defensible position of accepting a small national park in return for unrestricted logging outside of it. Small was the operative word. Timber executives claimed that a large park would eliminate thousands of jobs. Using jobs as their battle cry, they mobilized business and labor support in the two counties (Del Norte and Humboldt) where land would be set aside for the Redwood National Park.
It was in this context that candidate (not yet governor) Ronald Reagan, while speaking before the Western Wood Products Association in San Francisco on 12 March 1966, said the following:
I think, too, that weve got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if youve looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?
EDIT
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/if-youve-seen-one-tree/