Restoring giant sequoia groves following high-severity wildfire

Sequoia seedlings planted behind a burned log in Redwood Mountain Grove in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks as part of a post-fire restoration project. NPS/C BRIGHAM

Following two large-scale wildfires in 2020 and 2021, funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Burned Area Restoration (BAR) has supported giant sequoia replanting and restoration in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Work started in 2023 and continues to this day in areas where the wildfires burned at high-intensity, killing thousands of individual sequoias that each has stood on the landscape for millennia. In 2024, 65,000 giant sequoia seedlings were planted at Redwood Mountain and approximately 3,800 giant sequoias were planted at Board Camp Grove.

High-severity fire effects from the KNP Complex Fire in Redwood Mountain Grove in Sequoia National Park. NPS/C BRIGHAM

Based on two published studies of sequoia regeneration post-fire (Post-fire reference densities for giant sequoia seedlings in a new era of high-severity wildfires - ScienceDirect and Assessing giant sequoia mortality and regeneration following high‐severity wildfire (wiley.com)) National Park Service scientists and other experts found that several groves that burned at high-severity in the KNP Complex Fire (2021) and Castle Fire (2020) are unlikely to recover as giant sequoia forests without active restoration by replanting giant sequoias as well as sugar and ponderosa pines.

Mule carrying some of the more than 65,000 giant sequoias planted in high severity areas of Redwood Mountain Grove in October of 2023 after the grove was heavily damaged by unprecedented high severity fire effects. NPS/C BRIGHAM

Mountain Grove and Board Camp Grove, as well as in the adjacent federally endangered Pacific fisher critical habitat corridor to Redwood Mountain Grove. These efforts are expected to restore sequoia groves in areas that were highly impacted by unnatural levels of high-intensity fire.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks has completed analysis of other giant sequoia groves impacted by the 2020 and 2021 wildfires. Data supports that replanting is needed in portions of Homer's Nose, Dillonwood, and New Oriole Lake groves. Suwanee Grove was determined to meet the criteria under “monitoring only” due to the pattern of tree mortality. These additional groves will be replanted in Spring 2025.

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