TWIN PEAKS, Calif. — On the kitchen table of the Masonic lodge in this mountain village, Jim Asher gently unloaded 20 seedling giant sequoias from a cardboard box he received in the mail a few days ago.
They were the first of 30,000 such trees that Asher's Rim of the World Masonic Lodge bought from an Oregon nursery for resale locally as part of an ambitious, and somewhat controversial, effort to reclaim the San Bernardino Mountains' burned and beetle-ravaged forests.
Although not the only reforestation program planned for the area, "Project Cornerstone Tree" is the first to be implemented and Asher, a retired forester of 52 years, expects it will grow into a large, long-lived monument. After all, giant sequoias are drought-, bark beetle-, ozone- and fire-resistant, grow three feet a year, and live thousands of years.
"Consider it a modest start toward a new, managed forest," Asher said, with a shy smile while cradling one of the trees in his hands.
The Masonic lodge is already taking orders for the 12-inch trees, which are going for $2 each, or $1.50 each in batches of 500 or more, instructions included.
Planting won't start until April. However, after they are in the ground, there will be no turning back because a sequoia's taproot burrows deep.
But Katie Barrows, president of the Riverside/San Bernardino Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, questions bringing thousands of nonnative sequoias into an area dominated for centuries by ponderosa pine.
"People can plant what they choose on their private property," she said. "We just hope they consider the benefits of a locally adapted native species for wildlife and the heritage of the area."
Christie Robinson, education coordinator at the Mojave Desert Resource Conservation District, which is organizing its own reforestation effort, put it another way: "We cannot endorse bringing in a species that is not indigenous to the area. We wish they had selected a different tree."
Robinson also would prefer to forestall any major reforestation efforts in the region until erosion controls are in place, dead trees have been cleared, and forestry officials have nurtured hundreds of thousands of native seedlings from seeds collected locally -- a process that could take at least five years.
