If the giant sequoia is dying out, why are there tens of thousands of seedlings and saplings?
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In a Sierra Nevada canyon all but incinerated in the 2021 KNP Complex fire, a new forest of California’s beloved giant sequoias is now growing.Only not yet one that is actually giant.The seedlings and saplings are mostly knee-high to chest-high and mixed with thickets of ceanothus and other post-fire brush growing amid the true giants that stand dead among them.The fire killed almost every tree in this section of the Redwood Mountain Grove in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, reputedly the world’s largest stand of sequoias.The new trees number in the thousands — at least 4,000 per acre or as many as 20,000, depending on who is counting.
A few rise above head-height, the most energetic sentinels of regeneration.What will become of this nursery in the wild in the next hundred years, or thousand, is the crux of a scientific and policy dispute.Starkly different visions of how the grove will recover in the long run have implications on how forest managers should act today.The KNP Complex fire burned through all 3,000 acres of the Redwood Mountain Grove.
Due to the quirks of weather — and possibly to prescribed burns that had cleared out excess vegetation — most of the grove survived without any disfigurement visible today.But on the southern edge, flames rose into the treetops and killed almost every tree over 300 acres.
Scientists see the high-intensity burn scar as key to the future of the planet’s largest tree.But there is a vast divide in what they say they are seeing in it.
1 2 1.Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Calif., United States - October 21: These giant sequoia saplings sprung to life in a moderate burn area of the Redwood Mountain Grove as seen on Tuesday, Oct.
21, 2025 in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Calif.2.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Calif., United States - October 21: The SQF Complex fire burned four ...