Wildfires torched up to a fifth of world’s giant sequoia trees
LOS ANGELES: Lightning-sparked wildfires killed thousands of giant sequoias this year, leading to a staggering two-year death toll that accounts for up to nearly a fifth of Earth’s largest trees, officials said on Friday.
Fires in Sequoia National Park and surrounding Sequoia National Forest tore through more than a third of groves in California and torched an estimated 2,261 to 3,637 sequoias, which are the largest trees by volume.
Nearby wildfires last year killed an unprecedented 7,500 to 10,400 giant sequoias that are only native in about 70 groves scattered along the western side of the Sierra Nevada range. Losses now account for 13% to 19% of the 75,000 sequoias greater than 1.2m in diameter.
Blazes so intense to burn hot enough and high enough to kill so many giant sequoias — trees once considered nearly fireproof - puts an exclamation point on climate change’s impact.
“The sobering reality is that we have seen another huge loss within a finite population of these iconic trees that are irreplaceable in many lifetimes,” said Clay Jordan, superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
California has seen its largest fires in the past five years. Last year set a record for most acreage burned and this year, so far, is running second.
Tree deaths this year might have been worse if heavy rain and snow October 25 hadn’t dampened the fire. Fires burned from August last year into Januon ary. After last year’s Castle and SQF Complex fires took officials by surprise extraordinary measures were taken to save the largest and oldest trees this year.
The General Sherman tree — the largest living thing on earth — and other ancients were wrapped in foil blankets.
A fire-retardant gel was dropped on canopies that can sit above 60m tall. Sprinklers watered trunks and flammable matter was raked away from trees.The measures helped spare the Giant Forest, the premiere grove of massive trees in the park, but the measures couldn’t be deployed everywhere.
The bulk of the Suwanee grove in the park burned in extreme fire in the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River drainage. The Starvation Complex of groves in Sequoia National Forest was largely destroyed.
The greatest amount of damage was done in Redwood Mountain Grove in Kings Canyon National Park. The inferno became so intense it created a fire cloud that whipped up 97 kph winds.