'Once they're gone, they're gone': the fight to save the giant sequoia
Source: The Guardian
'Once they're gone, they're gone': the fight to save the giant sequoia
A conservation group plans to buy the largest privately owned sequoia grove as the climate crisis threatens the species’ future
Maanvi Singh in San Francisco
Sun 6 Oct 2019 12.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 6 Oct 2019 12.01 BST
Few living beings have experienced as much as the giant sequoias. With ancestors dating back to the Jurassic era, some of the trees that now grow along California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains been alive for thousands of years, bearing witness to most of human history – from the fall of the Roman empire to the rise of Beyoncé.
But a couple hundred years of human encroachment on to the sequoias’ habitat, combined with the climate crisis, increasingly intense wildfires, and drought have threatened the species’ future. The last of the world’s most massive trees now live on just 73 groves scattered across the Sierras. Most lie within protected national parks such as Sequoia national park, where visitors flock from around the world to marvel at General Sherman, the world’s most massive tree.
But not all sequoias are protected within the parks system. Now, in an ambitious bid to secure a future for them, a conservation group has struck an unusual deal to acquire the last, largest privately owned sequoia grove.
The deal is the result of two decades of discussions between the not-for-profit conservation group Save the Redwoods and the Rouch family, which has owned the 530-acre Alder Creek grove since before the second world war. The forest is home to hundreds of sequoias, including the Stagg Tree which – at more than 240ft tall and 100ft around – is the fifth-largest in the world.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/06/california-giant-sequoia-grove-alder-grove
