SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. At least a tenth of the world s mature giant sequoia trees were destroyed by a single California wildfire that tore through the southern Sierra Nevada last year, according to a…
It s not easy to kill a giant sequoia â the largest trees on Earth.
Yet newly revealed National Park Service estimates found the September 2020 Castle Fire killed a whopping 10 to 14 percent of all large sequoias, meaning the blaze killed
7,500 to 10,600 of the iconic trees. It was horrific, Nate Stephenson, a forest scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, previously told Mashable before the Park Service released a summary of the preliminary report on Thursday. It killed lots and lots and lots of the big sequoias. Â
The Castle Fire is vivid evidence of an intensified modern Western fire regime â largely stoked by a warming climate and grossly mismanaged, overcrowded forests â that s capable of producing infernos that destroy even some of the most robust, fire-adapted trees.Â
At least a tenth of the world s mature giant sequoia trees were destroyed by a single California wildfire that tore through the southern Sierra Nevada last year, according to a draft report prepared by scientists with the National Park Service.
A draft study says at least a tenth of the world’s mature giant sequoias were destroyed by a single California wildfire that tore through the southern Sierra Nevada last year.