Writers on the Range Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.com, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a conservation biologist and writer in Ashland, Oregon. Courtesy photo Giant sequoias come as close to immortality as living organisms can. Many live over a thousand years, an almost unimaginable span of survival in the face of all of nature’s challenges. So it comes as a shock to read that over 10% of all the giant sequoias on Earth — thousands of trees — were killed in last year’s Castle Fire in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When the immortals die, we can’t deny that we have entered a time of ecological chaos.