UPDATE [6/26/17]: CalWild’s Ryan Henson was featured in Sierra Magazine’s recent article about this battle, also featured on KPFA. You can read the article summary here.
As part of CalWild’s ongoing defensive work for protecting our public lands, we’ve mounted a campaign with a dozen local groups to specifically advocate for Giant Sequoia National Monument, which is under threat not only from President Trump’s executive order and resulting Department of Interior monument review, but now also some local politicians.
In particular, some members of the Kern County Board of Supervisors would like to recommend to the Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for the Monument be reduced in size from 328,000 acres to 90,000 acres! They will be discussing this at their upcoming meeting on June 27th at 2pm in Bakersfield.
Similar discussions may also be happening in Tulare and Fresno counties. Sign up for alerts from CalWild here or follow us on our Facebook page for the most up-to-date news.
You can help convince the Kern County Board of Supervisors to retain the Monument size and expand funding, which is a primary concern of monument detractors. Come early to the meeting and testify about your concerns and call the Supervisor in advance of the meeting to express your concerns. Wear green.
You could follow up the call by sending a letter of your issues to the Supervisor who you called. We have heard from Senatorial staff that federal legislators are only paying attention to calls, letters, and persons who visit—they do not consider emails as critical contacts. So rather than emailing, we recommend that you call or write letters, and testify at the Kern BOS meeting for the greatest impact. Here are the contacts you’ll need:
Kern County Contacts
Kern County Board of Supervisors
1115 Truxtun Avenue, 5th floor
Bakersfield, CA 93301
http://www.co.kern.ca.us/bos/
District 1 Mick Gleason http://www.co.kern.ca.us/bos/dist1/
District 2 Zack Scrivner, Chairman http://www.co.kern.ca.us/bos/dist2/
District 3 Mike Maggard http://www.co.kern.ca.us/bos/dist3/
District 4 David Couch http://www.co.kern.ca.us/bos/dist4/
District 5 Leticia Perez http://www.co.kern.ca.us/bos/dist5/
Kathleen Krause, Clerk of the Board of Supervisors: clerkofboard@co.kern.ca.us
If you’d like to make a comment to the DOI regarding this or other monuments, they are due July 10th. You can submit them here. We have been advised by our allies to focus your comments on one monument.
