SEQUOIA CREST, Calif. — The worker stabbed the loamy soil with a hoedad, dropped in a delicate sequoia seedling and tamped the dirt tight around it. As he moved on to the next spot, and then the next, the hillside of the Alder Creek Grove slowly filled with small clumps of green needles.
Without this planting, naturalists worry giant sequoias will never grow on this charred hillside again. The wildfire that scorched this southern Sierra Nevada forest three years ago burned large swaths of land so intensely that it left thousands of ancient giants dead and smoldering. Their seed cones — which would ordinarily spawn new life — were incinerated.
Such devastation was once unheard of but is now happening more frequently as land management decisions and climate change create more flammable forests in the Sierra.
