the giant sequoias of Yosemite threatened by the fires

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In five days, the Washburn Fire has already devoured 950 hectares of forest and is dangerously close to Mariposa Grove, the “butterfly grove”, an area of ​​​​Yosemite Park that was the first area to be protected by the federal government in 1864.

This is where the biggest and tallest trees in the world are found. Including the spectacular Grizzly Giant: more than 2,000 years old, a base up to 28 meters in circumference, a peak that culminates at 64 meters, almost the height of the towers of Notre-Dame in Paris. A sequoia that people come to photograph from all over the world.

Only a small part of Yosemite is affected – the park covers a total of almost 3,000 square km in the Sierra Nevada range in eastern California. But if firefighters are worried, it’s because in this area – very steep and heavily forested, which reopened only four years ago after a complete redevelopment – ​​the fire is still out of control. Despite tanker planes and helicopters dropping water from the sky, despite ground crews taking turns in the furnace. Nearly 600 men in total are trying to put out the flames.

To protect these iconic and treasured trees, firefighters have installed automatic sprinkler systems that keep the Grizzly Giant’s enormous trunk and the earth around it constantly moistened.

Voluntary fires were also started, as the Native American tribes did in the past, to consume all the brush, branches and dead trunks that risked feeding the fire, this made it possible to clear a wide safety belt around the trees. more valuable.

The management of the park describes all this, it communicates a lot on social networks and even has a spokesperson specifically responsible for informing the media and the general public about the fires. In California, drought and fires are becoming chronic phenomena. Last year already in Yosemite, it was in September, the giant sequoias had been threatened. The flames came within just 30 to 40 yards of “General Sherman”, whose base had been wrapped in a protective fire blanket.

Yet it is often said that these trees are so massive that they are able to withstand fires: their bark is so thick and so fibrous that it acts as an insulator and their imposing branches which grow 25 or 30 meters are generally outside of achievement. The giant sequoias are among the trees that best resist fires, which is why they have been able to survive for thousands of years. They even need fires: the heat makes the fallen cones burst like popcorn, it releases the seeds that will allow them to reproduce.

But they are suitable for low intensity fires. However, in recent years, forest fires in the American West have taken on an exceptional scale: they last longer and are more destructive. According to the Park Service, two years ago 10,000 redwoods perished in a single large fire. This year, nearly two million hectares have burned in the United States, a figure more than twice as high as the average for the past decade according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center. The year 2022 is also shaping up to be very difficult. “We expect to have another four, five or six very tough months“, had warned in June one of the managers of the firefighters of California, Brian Fennessy.

When the sequoias burn, it’s not only nature that goes up in smoke, it’s also an economic resource that disappears. More than 3.3 million people visit Yosemite Park each year, for its cliffs, waterfalls and trees. Visitors who have no desire to wander through charred forests.


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