California Wildfires Killed Thousands Of Giant Sequoias: Officials
NDTV
Scientists say human activity, including the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, is a major contributor to this planetary heating.
Wildfires that tore through California's forests this year killed thousands of giant sequoia trees, officials said Friday in the first full-scale assessment of the toll on the rare species.
Two huge lightning-sparked blazes burned up to 3,600 of the trees, each of them more than four feet (120 centimeters) in diameter, leaving them dead or expected to die within the next five years.
The figure represents five percent of the planet's entire reserve of the trees -- the largest species by volume in the world -- and comes after up to 14 percent of them were wiped out by fires a year earlier.
"The sobering reality is that we have seen another huge loss within a finite population of these iconic trees that are irreplaceable in many lifetimes," said Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Superintendent Clay Jordan.
