Climate change is killing giant sequoias in numbers that portend ecological disaster unless radical action is taken to reverse the impacts of the climate crisis. Sequoias, once deemed “unburnable,” began to be widely destroyed by fire in 2015, and then in 2020 and 2021, California fires tripled in area covered.
A climate change threshold has been crossed. We have warmed beyond the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth’s systems. “Starting in 2015, higher-severity fires have killed mature giant sequoias (those 4 feet or greater in diameter) in much greater numbers than has ever been recorded,” the National Park Service reports. “We have reached a tipping point — lack of frequent fire for the past century in most groves, combined with the impacts of a warming climate — have made some wildfires much more deadly for sequoias.”