Shortly after World War II, California fish managers had a brainstorm: They loaded juvenile trout into airplanes and saturation-bombed naturally fishless lakes in the High Sierra Mountains of California. Some of the fish hit rocks and ice, but most hit water.

Gorging on zooplankton, insects and two kinds of mountain yellow-legged frogs, the alien invaders unraveled aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, often in designated wilderness.

In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed both groups of frog as endangered, prompting aggressive action by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The agency plan called for eradicating trout in 110 lakes, though trout would remain in 465 park lakes and hundreds of stream miles, leaving plenty of fishing opportunity.

Gillnets would be used where possible. But in 33 lakes, the only option was rotenone, a short-lived, organic fish poison derived from plant roots and applied at 100 parts per billion. In modern fisheries management, rotenone has never been seen to permanently affect a native ecosystem except to restore it. For centuries, Indigenous peoples have used high concentrations to kill fish for consumption. Rotenone only affects gill tissue.

But as early as 2008, numerous anglers, media and local politicians were throwing hissy fits about an effort to protect mountain yellow-legged frogs merely by suspending trout stocking in 175 waters within national forests.

“If the yellow-legged frog disappears, would anyone notice? Seriously. Does anyone really care?” editorialized Feather Publishing in its six newspapers. And Terry Swofford, chair of the Plumas County Board of Supervisors, declared, “To me, this is just another way of destroying our economy.”

When the environmental review process for frog recovery in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks was completed in 2016, it generated plenty of support from environmental and angling communities. But there was still opposition.

Leading the charge against frog recovery via rotenone, and even gillnets, was the environmental group Wilderness Watch. “Poison has no place in wilderness,” it proclaims, wherever rotenone treatments are planned in wilderness.

But the Wilderness Act explicitly provides for the use of poisons to eradicate alien species. Federal permits are routinely issued.

Still, many opponents echoed Wilderness Watch’s false assertion that rotenone is “linked” to Parkinson’s disease. The myth derives from an Emory University study designed to create Parkinson’s-like symptoms, not the disease itself. Concentrated rotenone was pumped into rats’ veins for five weeks. No rat developed the disease, just Parkinson’s-like tremors.

Elsewhere in the Sierra, Wilderness Watch had litigated against, and dangerously delayed, rotenone treatment to save native Paiute cutthroat trout that were being hybridized off the planet by alien rainbow trout. Rotenone, it had testified, might harm mountain yellow-legged frogs — which don’t even exist in Paiute-cutthroat habitat.

After 2016, the opposition fell silent, and in 16 lakes cleared of trout with gillnets, ecosystems reawakened. Before eradication, surveys of two lakes revealed 134 mountain yellow-legged frogs and 53 tadpoles.

Just three years later, there were 4,000 frogs and 14,800 tadpoles.

“Once insects and frogs explode, everything reacts,” said Danny Boiano, the parks’ supervisory ecologist. In all 16 gillnetted lakes, he and aquatic ecologist Laura Van Vranken report spectacular recovery of frogs as well as frog predators such as coyotes, couch’s and mountain garter snakes, and northern water shrews. They’re seeing huge hatches of aquatic insects along with a resurgence of birds.

Ralph Cutter, who runs a guide service and fly-fishing school, understands what’s at stake even though his livelihood depends on the alien trout. His message: “I would much rather leave a legacy of as natural an ecosystem as possible, rather than an artificial and synthetic landscape designed for the amusement of certain enthusiasts — including myself.”

He added that the “Sierra should not be managed like a pee-wee golf course.” And this from the Native Fish Society: “Each high-mountain lake is a beautiful and unique place and is appreciated for what it is. Why treat them like amusement parks?”

Still, some anglers remain ecologically challenged, knifing float tubes and removing and damaging gillnets.

Rotenone use will begin shortly in 33 lakes. “Our first treatments may rekindle angst, so we’ll need to continue with educational efforts,” said ecologist Boiano. With rotenone, there’s always a fight.

Ted Williams, an avid trout angler, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit that seeks to spur lively conversation about the West. He writes about fish and wildlife for national publications.

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In just two years, wildfire has killed an estimated 13 to 19% of all mature giant sequoia trees. These most massive of trees grow only on certain western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range that divides California’s Central Valley farmland from the Great Basin Desert.

The loss of so many “big trees,” as conservationist John Muir called them, is unprecedented.

Many of the best-known stands of giant sequoias grow more than 6,000 feet above sea level in three national parks — Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite. A visit to these immense trees typically begins with a drive up from Fresno. From the valley floor, Highway 180 curves into foothills, then winds onto steep, tree-covered mountainsides where cooler temperatures and higher humidity take the edge off the California sun.

The road passes through Kings Canyon National Park, where visitors get their first impression of the big trees. As Muir acknowledged, words aren’t sufficient to convey the awe of that first encounter with giant sequoias: “No description can give anything like an adequate idea of their singular majesty, much less of their beauty.”

He added, “Nothing hurts the big tree.” Except in our time: severe wildfire and the chainsaw.

Muir’s words helped inspire the national parks that have protected many sequoia groves from logging, but our concern about wildfires led to government-mandated fire suppression for more than 100 years. Through a federal agency’s zeal, the big trees are in trouble. In the Sierra Madre’s fire regime, developed over centuries, sequoia groves burned every 6 to 35 years. Wildfire thinned the smaller trees and converted fine fuels into soil nutrients.

Without fire, sequoia cones don’t open and spread their seeds. The same fire also creates openings in the forest canopy, giving seedlings the sunlight they need to survive.

Research shows that giant sequoia populations were “stable or increasing” from 500 B.C. through the 1800s. Then came the 1900s, when “there was a massive failure of giant sequoia reproduction.” Without fire, sequoia seeds stopped sprouting, while the buildup of highly combustible fine fuels on the forest floor, and the greater density of smaller trees, increased the risk of catastrophic wildfire. 

As scientists began to understand the problem, the National Park Service implemented a prescribed burning program in giant sequoia groves. Evidence from recent wildfires indicates the program has been successful. Areas treated with prescribed fire burned less intensely, mature sequoias did not die and sequoia seedlings have since sprouted.

Clearly, sequoias need fire to survive.

The challenge is avoiding catastrophic wildfire, a challenge made difficult by today’s dense groves. According to Alexis Bernal, a researcher with the University of California at Berkeley, Sierra Nevada forests typically held about 20 sequoias per acre before 1860. Since then, fire suppression has allowed the growth of as many as 120 to 160 trees per acre.

Bernal advocates extensive logging before fire can resume its natural role. Emergency logging by government agencies has already begun in forests with sequoia groves, including clearcuts along roadways in Yosemite National Park.

Not everyone agrees that logging is the answer. Forest ecologist Chad Hanson, with the John Muir Project, calls Bernal’s approach an excuse to continue commercial logging of public lands. He believes sequoia deaths have been far lower than official estimates and that new trees can sprout even after severe fires.

Unfortunately, Congress has gotten involved. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, introduced the Save Our Sequoias Act in 2022 in the House. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, later introduced the act in the Senate. The bill would expedite mechanical “fuel treatments” by bypassing environmental laws.

We’re just lucky that record snowfall in the Sierra Madre threw a wet blanket on the initiative by reducing fire risk, as the bill has yet to be re-introduced in the current legislative session.

While the unprecedented threat to these priceless trees might be a rare instance in which “mechanical treatment” is justified, chipping away at environmental protections has rarely, if ever, proven beneficial for the environment— especially when politicians try to call the shots.

Giant sequoias need all the help they can get, but that help needs to be informed by good science.

Joe Stone is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is the editor of Forest News, the publication of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

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When the immortals die, we can’t deny that we have entered a time of ecological disaster. The landscapes of the West have been shifting before our eyes. Driven by climate change, familiar ecosystems are becoming … something else. The dead sequoias ask: What will that “something else” be?

It’s tempting to imagine that ecosystems will simply adapt, relocating to stay within their preferred climatic conditions. Where I live in southern Oregon, there is a well-defined succession of plant communities from the hot, dry valleys to the cool, wet mountain peaks. So, predictions about responses to climate change are often expressed in relation to elevation. For example, we might expect higher temperatures to cause pine forests to “move up the mountainsides,” making room for expanding oak woodlands.

To see if that’s realistic, let’s look at California’s Sierra National Forest, between Yosemite and Kings Canyon national parks. Following a severe drought and resulting pine beetle outbreak, a staggering 58% of the trees in the Sierra National Forest died between 2014-2017.

Forest Service biologists determined that mortality was especially high among the largest ponderosa pines. New seedlings were mostly incense-cedar and oak species, “representing a potential long-term shift in composition from forests that were dominated by P.ponderosa.” 

So, will these Sierra pine forests discreetly withdraw to cooler and wetter higher elevations? Will oaks move in to replace them? Given a century or two, maybe. 

But in the time frame of the next few decades, the answer is almost certainly no.  Human-caused climate change is occurring with such unprecedented speed that ecological transitions will not be orderly or gradual. They will be often violent, and in forest ecosystems will be driven by that agent of chaos — wildfire.

Individual trees don’t move; if conditions become unsuitable, they die, and dead trees are fuel.

In 2017, the Railroad Fire burned over 12,000 acres in the Sierra National Forest. In 2018, this was followed by the 96,000-acre Ferguson Fire. In 2020, the Creek Fire burned a staggering 375,000 acres of the same national forest. And just south of the Sierra National Forest, 2020’s Castle Fire burned almost 175,00 acres in the Sequoia National Forest and Giant Sequoia National Monument. 

Fueled by huge numbers of beetle-killed dead trees, these mega-fires consumed normally fire-resistant mature pines and giant sequoias, and of course, burned all the seedlings of oaks, incense-cedar, and other plants beginning to establish a new forest. 

Unfortunately, the situation in the Sierra National Forest is not unusual.  California — and the West — is burning everywhere.  Seventeen of the 20 largest wildfires ever recorded in California have occurred since 2003, and five of the six very largest all happened last year.

Repeated intense wildfires destroy the seedbank of trees, leaving behind a scabland of weeds and invasive grasses.  

I know many federal and private land managers. They do their best to reduce fuel loads and help communities of plants adapt to the new conditions. Managers of the Sierra National Forest also tried, but In the face of relentless warming and drought, it made little difference.

I fear that by unleashing incredibly rapid climate change, humanity has hit a hard reboot for the biosphere. The planet is resilient, and life will eventually stabilize, but it may take centuries.  

In the meantime, is there anything can we do?

First, of course, we must drastically cut CO² and methane emissions. Next, we need to preserve habitat linkages, to give plants and animals “escape routes” as they seek the conditions they need to survive. We may also need to take an active hand, moving key species to newly suitable areas as their former habitat is lost. For some species, like the giant sequoia, that may be the only hope. I hope we have the ecological wisdom to do what’s needed.

Welcome to chaos, it’s where we live now.

Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a biologist and writes in Oregon.

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