Natural History Wanderings

from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy

In the past two years, nearly 20 percent of all giant sequoias, the largest trees in the world that only grow naturally on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, have been killed. Among those killed were many of the largest trees in each grove, called monarchs, that mostly died in the 2020 Castle Fire and the 2021 KNP Complex and Windy fires.

In an effort to help protect these iconic trees from future wildfire, the federal government recently initiated emergency fuel-reduction treatments on 13,000-plus acres of U.S. Forest Service land in and around 12 different giant sequoia groves. Scheduled to begin this summer and end in 2024, these emergency-response treatments will complement the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC)-funded Grant Grove Big Stump Ecological Restoration Project, which will wrap up in early 2023.