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Famous giants of the forest devastated by wildfires

WILDFIRES sparked by lightning killed thousands of giant sequoias this year, adding to a staggering two-year death toll that accounts for up to nearly a fifth of Earth’s largest trees, officials say.

Fires in Sequoia National Park and the surrounding national forest that also bears the trees’ name tore through more than a third of the groves in California and torched an estimated 2261 to 3637 sequoias, the world’s largest trees by volume.

Fires in the same area last year killed an unprecedented 7500 to 10,400 of the 75,000 trees, which are only native in about 70 groves scattered along the western side of the Sierra Nevada range.

Intense fires that burned hot enough and high enough to kill

so many giant sequoias – trees once considered nearly fireproof – put an exclamation point on the impact of climate change.

‘‘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. ‘‘To ensure that they’re around for our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, some action is necessary.’’

California has seen its largest fires in the past five years, with last year setting a record for the total area burned. So far, the second-largest amount of land has burned this year.

After last year’s Castle and SQF Complex fires took officials by surprise by wiping out so many sequoias, 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 ancient trees were wrapped in foil blankets. A fire retardant gel was dropped on tree canopies that can exceed 60 metres in height. Sprinklers watered down trunks, and flammable matter was raked away from trees.

The measures spared the Giant Forest, the premiere grove of ancient trees in the park, but couldn’t be deployed everywhere. The bulk of the Suwanee grove in the park burned, and the Starvation Complex grove in Sequoia National Forest was largely destroyed.

In 2013, the park authorities did climate modelling which predicted that extreme fires wouldn’t jeopardise the sequoias for another 50 years, said Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science at the two parks.

WORLD

en-nz

2021-11-21T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-21T08:00:00.0000000Z

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