Green Channel: How the Climate Crisis is Killing the World's Oldest Living Creatures
A decade ago, giant sequoias mostly died of old age. These megaflora are the largest trees in the world and some of the oldest. There are specimens over 3200 years old. According to ecologists, sequoias have existed for so long because historically, only one or two out of a thousand old trees die every year.
Fire has always been a frequent visitor to the redwood groves, but rarely posed a threat. Mature sequoias are fire safe, because the bark can be more than a meter in thickness. And the branches and needles are so high that the fire does not reach them. This has been the case until now. But today the situation has changed.
According to the NY Times, the number of sequoias that have been burned down in the past five years is double that of the previous century. Climate change-related bushfires are burning harder, harder and higher than ever, causing nearly two-thirds of the roughly 48,000 acres of giant sequoia groves to burn down since 2015.
Now, forest fires, which historically do not pose a threat to these trees, are destroying huge tracts, fueled by climate change and weeds alien to ecosystems.
Fires become so large and hot that they can create their own weather systems, speeding up winds that spread the fire and creating columns of heat and smoke several kilometers high.
The habitat of redwoods is shrinking faster than trees can spread to more habitable areas. This species is hindered by slow migration. Previously, large sequoia seeds were carried by ground sloths, but now these animals are extinct, and the seeds are not carried far from the place of fall. And the general population seems to be aging.
Now representatives of the League of Redwood Rescue see the solution in buying young redwood forests around old trees in the hands of the state, thereby creating a protective "buffer". And the preservation of this species is critical, because it is the sequoias that absorb more carbon dioxide than any other forest system in the world. So the survival of the trees directly affects the success of the fight against global warming.
