A wildfire in California’s Yosemite National Park threatens a forest of rare redwoods. Firefighters have set up a line to protect the trees, which are sometimes thousands of years old.
The so-called Washburn forest fire in the well-known nature park has been raging for several days and is now about 11 square kilometers in size. Tourists and local residents have been evacuated from the nearby area as firefighters struggle to bring the flames under control.
The oldest tree in the forest, the estimated 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant, is kept wet to prevent fire from taking hold, writes LA Times.
Sequoias are found only on the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. There are 500 in the now threatened area of Yosemite. The trees are often hundreds to thousands of years old and can reach tens of meters in height, with a circumference of several meters.
Redwoods are originally fire resistant, but in recent years they have been increasingly affected by wildfires in California, which are becoming hotter and more intense due to climate change. Last year a fire in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks killed 3,600 redwood trees, about 3 to 5 percent of all redwoods in the world. A year earlier, 10 percent of all redwood trees worldwide died from fire in that same region.
–
