In 2015, lightning sparked a fire known as the Rough Fire that ultimately burned more than 150,000 acres of forest east of Fresno and just west of Kings Canyon National Park.
The fire burned seven different sequoia groves in the Sequoia National Forest and a grove called the General Grant Complex in Kings Canyon National Park. Once the flames subsided and the smoke cleared, experts noticed that the fire had killed an unusual number of large sequoias — 27 on parkland and 74 on national forests.
It is unprecedented for so many sequoias to wither in one year, causing deep anxiety to those who study and care for them, with some crying at the sight of the carcass of a giant that had lived for more than 1,000 years. Some people washed away. Ben Blom, director of management and restoration for the Save the Sequoia Federation, said after the devastating fire, the idea of an immortal sequoia no longer appears to be true.
While the impact of the Rough Fire was alarming, „it wasn't until 2020 and 2021 that things changed by an order of magnitude,“ Blom said. „We're talking about tens of thousands of large trees dying over the last two fire seasons,“ Blom said, adding that after those fires, „we realized that large trees were facing an existential threat.“
The crisis is rooted in climate change that has caused record heat and drought, increased pest pressure, and an increase in large fires in California, combined with a century of efforts to suppress frequent low-scale fires. It combines a long history.
In response to this emergency, experts have declared a Code Red and are now working quickly to save the remaining giants. A team of biologists, Native American tribes, and government agencies is urgently thinning the dense forest surrounding the large tree and conducting prescribed burns. Research shows that such efforts can help prevent extremely hot fires that can reach the sequoia canopy.
But „active management,“ such as using heavy machinery or chainsaws to cut down trees in unique, protected ecosystems, has also sparked controversy. A bipartisan bill in Congress aimed at providing more funding for tree thinning efforts is being challenged by a coalition of conservation groups who say the bill does not provide adequate environmental review.
The giant sequoia is the world's largest tree by volume and grows only in California. It reaches a height of 300 feet and inhabits 80 groves or grove complexes along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in central California. All but eight of these groves occur in a narrow 60-mile-long strip at elevations between 4,000 and 8,000 feet. A member of the giant sequoia family, coastal sequoias are generally tall, reaching up to 350 feet, but are not very large in girth.
For a long time, sequoias were thought to be immortal. Its thick, fire-resistant bark and raised crown make it well-adapted to wildfires. If a fire breaks out, they usually won't die. In fact, sequoias thrive when competitors for light, water, and nutrients are eliminated, and the heat of the fire helps the sequoia cones open and release seeds for reproduction. Bugs won't kill them and there's no disease. That's why many of these trees live for thousands of years. The oldest sequoias are over 3,200 years old. In North America, only the pines grow long.
Sequoias are vulnerable to fire primarily due to drought. From 2012 to 2016, California experienced its most severe drought since climate instrument records were kept. Although the past two years of rain and snow have officially ended the drought, the state's climate continues to warm, with average summer temperatures rising 3 °F (1.8 °C) since the end of 2019.th century. As temperatures rise linearly, the vapor pressure deficit (essentially atmospheric thirst) increases exponentially, increasing the amount of water we draw from trees, other plants, and the soil.
As the drought continued, native bark beetles swooped in and began killing large swathes of California's coniferous forests, though not the sequoias. Vast stands of white fir, red fir, and especially ponderosa pine (an estimated 147 million trees) withered beneath the redwoods, their needles turning brown and their craters drying out. And then a fire broke out.
„There's a sea of brown trees that have died from beetles and drought, interspersed with monarch butterflies (trees that are at least 4 feet in diameter and often larger),“ Blom said. „The reason fire kills giant sequoias is because the ladder fuel carries the fire all the way into the canopy. We had perfect storm conditions for all of this to happen.“
Another factor contributing to forest vulnerability is the removal of indigenous peoples from most of America's lands during the settlement period. This led them to stop using so-called good fire, that is, frequent low-intensity fire that increases food for game animals. „All tribes across California have always practiced cultural burning, and it's a practice that we continue to have,“ said Kenneth McDerment, a trustee of the Tule River Indian Tribe. Told. „That's good for the forest.“
Historical research shows that low-to-moderate-intensity wildfires caused by lightning strikes or indigenous people occurred every 6 to 35 years, resulting in significant reductions in fuel loads.However, that system changed in the early 2020s.th century. In 1935, federal agencies adopted the so-called 10 a.m. policy, which required all fires to be extinguished by 10 a.m. the next morning after they were discovered, after a series of large wildfires on public lands. As fire science and forest ecology evolved, federal agencies took a more nuanced position, allowing fires to burn due to natural causes in some areas. Meanwhile, fuel was accumulating.
„If you look at the National Park Service groves, you'll see that over the past 80 to 100 years, more than 50 lightning-induced fires that could have (beneficially) burned down these groves have been suppressed. '' said Christy Brigham, director of resource management science for the National Park Service. Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park. „And that's true across the spectrum.“
The 2020 and 2021 fire seasons were a wake-up call. 13 percent and 19 percent All giant sequoias were over 4 feet in diameter, and many trees were much larger. Before King Arthur's Tree in Sequoia National Park was destroyed by fire, it was his eighth largest giant sequoia in the world.
In 2022, officials overseeing forests in national forests and national parks declared a state of emergency and began extensive mechanical and hand thinning of redwood forests, followed by logging and prescribed burning. Removing this material has the added benefit of allowing the remaining trees to receive more precipitation, making them more resilient.
Recent review Some of the literature on the value of thinning and burning to reduce wildfire risk. ecological usestates that a “range of active management measures” including controlled wildfires, prescribed burning, and mechanical thinning are “justified and necessary to respond to climate change and changing wildfire conditions.” I discovered that. The paper acknowledged that these measures are not necessarily appropriate for all types of forests, and warned that thinning could worsen wildfire damage if not done properly.
Blom's group supports thinning dense young trees and reducing the buildup of vegetation and wood debris from the forest floor through prescribed burns and mechanical methods, but it does not support the use of prescribed burning or mechanical methods to thin out dense young trees and reduce the accumulation of vegetation and wood debris from the forest floor. It states that approximately 26,000 acres of land would need to be cleared for all of the redwood forests. , approximately 8,000 acres have already been treated.
The Tule River Indian Tribe has managed eight redwood groves on its reservation for 40 years. McDerment believes these efforts limited damage to trees during recent wildfires. The tribe plans to reintroduce beavers next spring. Their dams help keep more water in the meadows near the grove.
Meanwhile, foresters are researching the best way to add trees to areas that have already been burned. The researchers established seedling plots to study which genomes of sequoias and other conifers would best survive under expected future conditions. „We check them over time to see which ones grow well,“ said Joanna Nelson, Save the Sequoia League's director of science and conservation planning.
Earlier this year, U.S. lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill called „Save Our Sequoias“ that would provide additional funding for sequoia thinning. The bill received support from forest products, ranch, farm, and recreation organizations. But a coalition of 80 environmental groups said in a letter to members of Congress that the bill would allow federal agencies to waive environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Protection Agency under the guise of an „emergency.“ He opposed the bill, saying it would set a precedent. policy law, endangered species law, and other environmental law.
Without this consideration, as well as community and scientific input, the bill would „lead to hasty and poorly planned projects that would significantly impact soils, rivers and wildlife, and increase the risk of wildfires,“ the group said. said. No public hearings have been held, and the bill remains unresolved as the Forest Service and National Park Service's budgets continue to decline.
But it's not without pushback. In 2022, Earth Island Institute sued the National Park Service to stop its thinning operations in Yosemite National Park, arguing that the service skipped environmental reviews and that the project amounted to commercial logging. A federal appeals court rejected those claims in September, finding that the Park Service's activities were adequate to prepare for prescribed burns and could continue. Later that month, Wilderness Watch, Tule River Conservancy, and Sequoia Forestkeeper filed a lawsuit alleging that mechanized logging in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks violates conservation laws.
The debate is sure to intensify as the Biden administration pledges to spend $50 billion over 10 years to reduce fuel loads on 50 million acres in 11 Western states.
But advocates say urgent action is needed. „These forests that we cherish can be reduced to scrubland if we continue to experience severe fires like the ones we're seeing,“ said Nelson of the Save the Sequoias Coalition. He said this, citing recent reports. study It evaluated dry coniferous forests in the western United States. “We know what we have to do to address climate change, and we have to do everything we have to do. We need greenhouse gas emissions limits, and we need to keep giant sequoias around us. It also requires active management for planting.”