Wildfires are threatening this 2,000-year-old sequoia. Meet the ecologist fighting to save it

The Grizzly Giant may not be the tallest or the oldest giant sequoia, but forest ecologist Garrett Dickman says it's still one of the most famous trees in the world. 

In 1903, the Grizzly Giant housed U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and naturalist John Muir under its branches, in a historic camping trip that is said to have inspired the country's national park system. 

"It's incredibly important, and it is an incredibly beautiful and amazing tree," said Dickman, who works to protect the giant sequoias in California's Yosemite National Park.

That is why he and other ecologists were alarmed when a wildfire expanded to the park's Mariposa Grove last week, threatening to destroy the Grizzly Giant and other thousand-year-old giant sequoias. 

Dickman spoke with As It Happens guest host David Cochrane about the threat, and how the fires can be an opportunity to save the giant trees. Here is part of their conversation. 

How are the giant sequoias doing this year?

Overall, they're doing really well. I mean, we had a really close call with the Washburn Fire escape into the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. But luckily, no giant sequoias were killed during the fire.

You can't replace a 2,000, 3,000-year-old tree. Not in my lifetime and next generation's lifetime; not in the generation after that.- Garrett Dickman, Yosemite National Park ecologist

When it comes to uncontained wildfires, this is relatively good news. But how does that compare to previous years? 

In the past two years, we've lost nearly 20 per cent of all giant sequoias on Earth in high-severity fires. Prior to that, we probably had around a couple of hundred trees that died in the past 2,000 years from high-severity fires. So things are changing, and not in a very good way for giant sequoias.

In 2020, 7,500 to 10,500 trees were lost. In 2021, another 3,000 trees were lost. There's about 80,000 trees total [remaining]. So it's very significant to lose that many trees in such a short period of time.

How do you go about protecting these giant trees?

The success story that we're finding out of the Washburn fire is that we had been conducting prescribed fires there for nearly 50 years. And so we've been able to protect them through years and years of hard work from previous firefighters and managers. 

If you don't have that, you have to do some pretty drastic actions that could be frantically removing fuels from the bases of trees. We've set up sprinkler systems to try to protect them.

You've probably seen the shelter wrap that we put around trees like the General Sherman last year in the KNP Complex. When it comes down to it, that's protecting individual trees, and really we should be thinking about protecting entire groves. 

There is one very famous tree, the Grizzly Giant. How important is it to protect that specific tree? 

You know, it is one of the most famous trees on Earth. The Mariposa Grove was set aside in 1864 by Abraham Lincoln right in the middle of the Civil War. And that tree was a big part of it. 

And that tree is the tree that President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir camped under and kind of hashed out the ideas of the National Park Service. So that tree is just figuratively and literally the birth of the National Park Service. So it's incredibly important and it is an incredibly beautiful and amazing tree.

What is it like for you when you do see one of these trees burn and when you lose one?

I'm not going to lie, I've definitely cried over this. I mean, it's like losing these great pieces of art. And you can't replace a 2,000, 3,000-year-old tree. Not in my lifetime and [the] next generation's lifetime; not in the generation after that. 

There will be a whole forest of giant sequoia seedlings that are going to come up next year. But the babies, though amazing, are nothing quite like the adults.

How worried are you about the frequency and intensity of these fires over the next several years? 

Quite worried. There is an opportunity there, though. Eighty per cent of the giant sequoias have seen fire in the past five years alone. And because of that, there's reduced amount of fuel loading in those groves. 

So there's an opportunity for us to go in there and start getting good fire on the ground to prevent the bad fires that we know that could come for them. So it is stressful, but I also see it as this great opportunity that we can really take advantage of if we act right now.

Written by Olsy Sorokina. Interview with Garrett Dickman produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.