California wildfires threaten redwoods

Wildfires raging through California’s forests have reached redwoods, raising fears that beloved conifers, some as old as 1,500 years old, could again be devastated by flames.

Flames from the Windy fire reached at least three groves of giant redwoods on Thursday evening, officials confirmed on Friday. The extent of damage to Long Meadow Grove, Peyrone Grove and South Peyrone Grove was still unclear, a US Forest Service official told BuzzFeed News.

The Sequoia National Forest is home to the tallest trees in the world, some of which have grown for more than 3,000 years in the Sierra Nevada, but they are devastated by drought and recent wildfires.

Long Meadow Grove is home to the 100 Giants Trail; at least 125 giant sequoias with a diameter of at least 3 meters live there.

The Windy Fire has so far burned more than 6,800 acres in the forest. Authorities were also keeping their sights on the KNP complex fire, which burned more than 11,300 acres and threatens the Giant Forest, home to the world’s tallest tree, General Sherman.

Forestry officials have said they are ready to protect the giant forest’s historic trees by digging fire lines, using sprinklers and brushing around what is the only home of the world’s tallest trees.

Park officials on Thursday attempted to take additional steps to protect the giant trees, wrapping some of the oldest and tallest trees in aluminum foil at their base to protect them from the flames to come.

However, firefighters were concerned that the protections they were taking were not enough to stop the sustained rate of the blaze, which covered more than 11,300 acres in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks on Friday afternoon.

Among the giant trees shrouded in a last ditch effort to save them was General Sherman, the tallest tree in the world, which measures 275 feet and is over 36 feet in diameter at its base.

On Friday, however, authorities reported minimal growth in the fires and the flames had yet to penetrate the giant tree house. Firefighters added that they were hopeful that the water drops and crews assigned to digging the fire lines could prevent the flames from entering the forest.

Jon Wallace, chief of the operations section for the KNP complex fire, said the primary goal of the fire crews was to protect communities and infrastructure in the towns of Three Rivers and North Fork, which remained threatened by the ‘fire.

The secondary goal for the crews was to protect the historic trees of the Giant Forest and to hopefully work to prevent the flames from damaging the redwoods.

Prescribed burns have helped reduce the threat of fires there, he said, but the consistently dry weather has raised the possibility of dry brush and plants that could fuel the approaching fire.

“The fuels, if you will, are in great shape, but there is a lot of concern that with this year’s drought this drought has reduced the resilience of these trees,” he said.

Five teams worked near the giant forest, digging lines of fire and vegetation in the hopes of keeping the flames away. If they can’t put out the fire, Wallace said, teams would start performing burnouts in the giant forest to cut off the fire’s path.

Fire officials expect the fire to continue to climb up the slope at its northeast end and climb towards the giant forest over the next 48 hours.

Both the Windy and KNP Complex fires were triggered by lightning strikes, but weather disasters are inextricably linked to human-induced climate change. The planet has warmed 2.1 degrees since 1880, according to NASA, making catastrophes worse. This includes the extended seasons of wildfires and heat waves that become hotter, more frequent and more lasting. The cost of climate disasters is skyrocketing. Ending this vicious circle will require drastically reducing our dependence on climate-polluting fossil fuels.

Giant sequoias, some of which are hundreds of years old, face a new existential threat as large, destructive forest fires burn across the western United States, destroying thousands of acres at a time.

Last year, between 10% and 14% of all historic trees were killed in the castle fire, which burned more than 174,000 acres of Sequoia National Forest and Kings Canyon National Park. The castle fire was triggered by lightning in August 2020.

Left in the charred devastation of the castle fire, an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 of the trees were killed in their only natural habitat in the Sierra Nevada, according to a National Park Service report.

The true damage from the fire will likely take years to assess, the report says; the castle fire and future fires in the area pose an unprecedented threat to the majestic sequoias, some of which have a trunk diameter of at least 4 feet.