Thousands of Giant Sequoias Killed in California Wildfires

By BRIAN MELLEY, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sequoia National Park says lightning-sparked wildfires in the past two years have killed a minimum of nearly 10,000 giant sequoia trees in California.

The estimate released Friday accounts for 13% to 19% of the native sequoias that are the largest trees on Earth.

Photo Credit: Eric Paul Zamora, Pool for Getty Images

The trees are reliant on periodic low-intensity fire and were once seen as fire-resistant.

But fires that have become more severe as climate change has brought hotter droughts and fires have torn through dozens of groves in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the last six years, killing the giants in large numbers for the first time.

Photo Credit: Eric Paul Zamora, Pool for Getty Images

Extraordinary firefighting measures this year helped save some giants.

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