The Windy Fire is tearing through California's famed sequoia country, with early surveys showing that the wildfire has killed 44 of the long-lived monarchs.
The Windy Fire is tearing through California's famed sequoia country, with early surveys showing that the wildfire has killed 44 of the long-lived monarchs.
Despite those extraordinary efforts, the team has only been able to save a handful of trees in the hardest-hit groves, some of which haven't experienced fire in more than a century. While sequoias need fire to reproduce and thrive, high-intensity blazes can spread to their crowns and incinerate them."Five years ago, we weren't doing this because we didn't need to.
Now, firefighters are doing damage control, going into the burned groves and raking the burning duff off the sequoias' sensitive roots, which grow close to the ground. At the same time, Dickman is keeping a "body count" of the likely dead sequoia: Those that have toppled over completely or had more than 95% of their crowns burned.It's been a harrowing decade for the world's giant sequoia population.