Kevin Kiley: “this week, I was delighted to see that a bill that I am sponsoring, the Save Our Sequoias Act, passed the House of…”

“this week, I was delighted to see that a bill that I am sponsoring, the Save Our Sequoias Act, passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support. This act, as the name suggests, is designed to save, preserve, and protect one of the truly great marvels that we have here on Earth. The sequoia is the largest organism on the planet, and it actually continues to grow throughout its lifetime. They can live for millennia, so these trees serve as a living link to our past, a link to antiquity itself. When you see these marvels, which we have so many of in California, it truly inspires a sense of awe and humility as you contemplate both their scale here in the present and their link to our past. The bad news is that these incredible marvels are under threat. Over the last decade, we have seen 20 percent of them destroyed, largely because of the growing intensity of wildfires. The time has come for us to take urgent action to ensure that they can continue to inspire awe and serve their important ecological purpose as well for generations and millennia to come. Specifically, the Save Our Sequoias Act enhances coordination between Federal, State, Tribal, and local land managers. It creates a giant sequoia health and resiliency assessment to prioritize and inform forest management practices. It declares an emergency to expedite environmental reviews and consultations while maintaining robust scientific analysis.”