Protecting California's Giant Sequoia Trees Among Wildfires

They're among the oldest and astir elephantine surviving things connected Earth: sequoias. A nationalist treasure nether menace from an utmost occurrence — the KNP occurrence — which is wherefore the U.S. Forest Service has taken utmost measures to prevention them. It's wrapping immoderate of the astir celebrated sequoias. 

"We besides had sprinklers connected present that were spraying h2o each the mode to the apical of this feline face, wetting down the wood," main of assets absorption Christy Brigham said. "And past they raked backmost and moved the dense fuels, the large logs away."

Brigham, the starring adept astatine Sequoia and Kings Canyon nationalist parks, is lasting successful beforehand of the General Grant — the second-largest histrion successful the world. The occurrence ne'er reached it and it present appears to beryllium retired of the woods.

JASON BELLINI: "How galore sequoias bash you deliberation yet volition dice due to the fact that of this fire?"

CHRISTY BRIGHAM: "I person nary idea. I privation I knew."

BELLINI: "Could it beryllium successful the hundreds?"

BRIGHAM: "It could be. It mightiness beryllium little than that. I truly don't know."

She doesn't cognize due to the fact that astir of the sequoia groves are successful dense wilderness areas where, successful immoderate spots, the occurrence is inactive burning. And adjacent ones that look from a region to beryllium OK whitethorn inactive die.   

BELLINI: "If the canopies burn, past the trees die. Do I person that right?"

BRIGHAM: "Yes. Let maine springiness you a small spot of a nerd nuance ... If 90 to 100% of the canopy scorches and the needles are heated and killed, that tin besides termination a elephantine sequoia."

Brigham knows this each excessively well. 

"We mislaid 10 to 14% of the full colonisation successful past year's Castle Fire," she said. "That's 7,500 to 10,600 elephantine sequoias implicit 4 feet successful diameter."

Until the Castle Fire, experts didn't cognize the grade to which elephantine sequoias, besides known arsenic monarchs, were susceptible to today's megafires.  

BELLINI: "They, successful fact, request fires successful bid to reproduce. Correct?"

BRIGHAM: "Correct. And I don't privation anyone to locomotion distant from this occurrence reasoning that sequoias aren't astonishing and pugnacious due to the fact that they are. You don't unrecorded to beryllium 2,000 years aged by being a weakling. They request occurrence to turn the adjacent procreation of monarchs, truthful they person precise heavy bark that protects them from heat. The cones really request vigor from occurrence to unfastened and merchandise the seeds. But we person pulled immoderate changes connected them."

BELLINI: "Some changes?"

BRIGHAM: "Yep, we suppressed each lightning, the bulk of lightning fires, and removed taste and tribal burning for 100 years. So we removed those predominant fires. The wood got much dense, It got afloat of ladder fuels, and past we turned up the vigor and the drying, with clime alteration driving hotter droughts susceptible of getting into the canopy and incinerating 1,000- and 2,000-year-old trees."

This portion of occidental California is successful a seven-year drought. Brigham said erstwhile the KNP Fire reached this area, she smelled trouble.  

BRIGHAM: "I knew that this grove was astatine risk. I cried. And it was terrible. So it's a immense alleviation to spot to spot each these lasting sequoias and cognize a batch of this grove is going to beryllium fine."

BELLINI: "But determination besides is simply a batch that whitethorn not beryllium alive?"

BRIGHAM: "There volition beryllium losses."

We'll cognize the numbers eventually, but the nonaccomplishment to radical similar Brigham who cherish these trees is incalculable.

"They marque maine consciousness similar I'm lasting successful the beingness of immortality," she said.