Behind the Story: The Plan to Save Yosemite by Cutting Down Trees

In the 1860s, photos of Yosemite Valley taken by Carleton Watkins helped persuade President Abraham Lincoln to declare the land a protected public trust, a prelude to it becoming a national park.

The images showed the sheer face of Half Dome, Vernal Falls cascading over rocks, and the glassy and inviting Merced River.

Today, Garrett Dickman, a forest ecologist at Yosemite National Park, uses the same photographs for a very different purpose: determining which trees in the park should be felled.

“I will quite literally take the photo and look at where I think the view is and mark the trees that I think need to be removed to restore the vista,” Dickman told The New York Times.

My colleagues Thomas Fuller and Livia Albeck-Ripka wrote an article that published today about an effort to save Yosemite, one of America’s oldest national parks, from devastating fires by using chain saws. Rangers have been pruning trees in the park for as long as it has had roads, but these latest tree-cutting projects are of a much larger scale and scope, they report.

Recent megafires in California have made clear that our forests are overloaded with vegetation and primed to burn in a very hot and damaging way. Prescribed burns aren’t enough to thin forests anymore, Yosemite officials say, especially as the park seems perennially under siege by fire and smoke.

When Thomas traveled to the park last week to report this story, the Washburn fire was smoldering. Two days after he left, the Oak fire erupted. “Every time I go up there some part of the forest seems to be on fire,” Thomas told me.

But Yosemite’s plan is not without pushback. A judge this month temporarily halted the park’s tree-cutting efforts in response to a lawsuit filed by an environmental group based in Berkeley. The suit argues that the park did not properly review the impacts of that tree thinning.

The debate raises philosophical questions about what preservation really means, and how much humans should intervene. For thousands of years, forests were “preserved” through the regular use of fire by Native American tribes: Trees were spaced out, meadows were kept clear, water flowed more freely and underbrush was tamed, Thomas told me.

“The experts we spoke to say that the fire suppression of this past century has been a sharp departure — an aberration in terms of the timeline of human interaction with California forests,” he said. “Today’s park managers at Yosemite argue that they want to bring the forests back to the state they were under Native stewardship.”

The parks are being affected by not just decades of fire suppression, but also the impacts of global warming and of urban areas increasingly encroaching on undeveloped land, Livia added. The national parks are being greatly influenced by a number of human-driven forces, even if they’re unintentional.

Nate Stephenson, a scientist emeritus in forest ecology for the United States Geological Survey, told Livia, “The question becomes: Can we or should we do intentional interventions to counteract them?”

For more:

• Firefighters continue to make progress against a huge fire that forced evacuations for thousands near Yosemite, The Associated Press reports.

• A fire in Amador County on Monday completely leveled a lumber mill that employed 150 people, The Sacramento Bee reports.

The rest of the news

• Skittles: A class-action lawsuit filed in California said that Mars Inc., the maker of the candies, had “long known of the health problems” of a coloring used in the iconic hues of the Skittles rainbow. Here’s what we learned about its safety.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

• Los Angeles mask mandate: Los Angeles County coronavirus cases appear to be falling, with some residents hoping the drop may stave off a mask mandate, The Los Angeles Times reports.

• L.A.P.D. lawsuit: The parents of a 14-year-old girl who was killed in a clothing store by a stray bullet fired by a police officer is suing the Los Angeles Police Department, The Associated Press reports.

• Road rage: Four of the past five months have had record-high reports of road rage with increased gun involvement, Crosstown reports.

• Federal investigation: A Jewish student filed a complaint against U.S.C. claiming that she was discriminated against for pro-Israel views, The Associated Press reports.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

• Automated agriculture: California’s strawberry harvest relies on tens of thousands of pickers, but robots may change that, The Los Angeles Times reports.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

• Sonoma Raceway: Two Confederate flags were removed from the racetrack campsite on Sunday, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

• Kite festival: The Berkeley Kite Festival will not happen this year. The organizer said that after event fees increased, he cannot afford to host it, Berkleyside reports.

• Prisoner abuse: A correctional officer at California State Prison, Sacramento, pleaded guilty to assaulting two inmates and ultimately killing one.

What we’re eating

Cucumber soup.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Elizabeth Naleway:

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to [email protected]. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

And before you go, some good news

Of the 13 authors nominated on Tuesday for this year’s Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, six are from the United States.

And among the American authors, the California ties run deep.

Leila Mottley, a 20-year-old from Oakland, was nominated for “Nightcrawling,” a best seller about a desperate Black teenager in the Bay Area who ends up in a sex-trafficking ring.

The other nominees include Selby Wynn Schwartz, who teaches writing at Stanford University, and Percival Everett, a distinguished professor of English at U.S.C.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Soumya

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Fighting spirit (5 letters).

Isabella Grullón Paz and Jack Kramer contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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