Clinton to protect California's giant sequoias

PORTERVILLE, Calif. - President Clinton is extending greater protection to more than 30 groves of giant sequoia trees across California, employing his executive authority to add to his environmental legacy in his final year in office.

The declaration Saturday would add to the 2.8 million acres of national monuments Clinton already has created, giving him perhaps the best conservation record in the Lower 48 states since Theodore Roosevelt.

The sequoias can grow close to 300 feet tall and 40 feet thick and are found in ancient groves scattered through the Sierra Nevada range.

The massive reddish trunks create what are often described as nature's cathedrals, with thick carpets of pine needles that mute most sound and sunlight that filters dimly through the branches.

''These trees are truly amazing,'' says Don Holtan, a Madison, Wis., engineer who stopped in Sequoia National Park on Thursday to walk among the giants. ''I think they are truly humbling.''

About half of America's sequoia groves are already protected because they lie within the Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks. Clinton's declaration applies to most of the other half.

Those trees are already in national forests and are protected from logging. But changing the land's designation from a ''national forest'' to a ''national monument'' creates a buffer zone around the trees where logging of other species would be banned along with some forms of recreation and development.

Clinton is protecting 355,000 acres under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows him to designate land a ''national monument'' without going to Congress.

That angers some Republicans, and many residents of the foothills here, who say the president's move is yet another federal land grab. Others worry that business and recreation will be squeezed out.

''I don't think we really need this,'' said Brian Clausen, a Porterville convenience store clerk. ''I think the president is just trying to leave a legacy so people do not think so much about the sex scandal.''

California GOP chairman John McGraw said: ''The best way to preserve this area is to have the public use it carefully, not shut it down completely.''

The declaration will bring the amount of land set aside by Clinton in the Lower 48 states to 3.1 million acres - more than any president including Theodore Roosevelt, who created the national park system.

Jimmy Carter holds the conservation record. Frustrated after battles with Congress, he used the Antiquities Act to create 54 million acres of national monuments in Alaska.

Previously, Clinton created the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah in 1996. In January, he designated the Grand Canyon-Parashant and Agua Fria national monuments in Arizona, which total more than 1 million acres, and the California Coastal National Monument, which encompasses thousands of offshore rocks and tiny islands the length of the California coast.

In October, he ordered the Forest Service to study whether to designate ''wilderness areas'' across 50 million acres of national forest in 38 states. A wilderness designation is the highest degree of protection; it bars logging, grazing, road-building and all use of motorized vehicles.

''That may make him the Teddy Roosevelt of the 21st century,'' said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.

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Associated Press Writer Bart Jansen in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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On the net:

Forest Service, information on Sequoia National Forest: http://www.r5.fs.fed.us/sequoia

National Park Service, information on giant sequoias: http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/antiq.htm

National Park Service, history of the national park system and the Antiquities Act: http://www.nps.gov/seki/lpvc.htm