Devastating fires across the Sierra Nevada have severely impacted ancient sequoia groves over the last two years.
In the past two years, wildfires in California have destroyed almost 20% of the global population of giant sequoia trees, officials report. The fires, which have ravaged the Sierra Nevada mountain range, have resulted in the death of thousands of these massive trees, considered the largest by volume on Earth.
In 2021 alone, fires across Sequoia National Park and nearby national forests burned through more than a third of the sequoia groves, resulting in the loss of an estimated 2,261 to 3,637 trees. The previous year’s fires in 2020 killed an additional 7,500 to 10,400 sequoias out of the roughly 75,000 that remain worldwide.
These giant sequoias, some of which are over 3,000 years old, grow in about 70 groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The rapid loss of such ancient trees underscores the escalating threat wildfires pose to California’s natural heritage.
