Few living beings have experienced as much as the giant sequoias. With ancestors dating back to the Jurassic era, some of the trees that now grow along California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains been alive for thousands of years, bearing witness to most of human history – from the fall of the Roman empire to the rise of Beyoncé.
But a couple hundred years of human encroachment on to the sequoias’ habitat, combined with the climate crisis, increasingly intense wildfires, and drought have threatened the species’ future. Most lie within protected national parks such as Sequoia national park, where visitors flock from around the world to marvel at General Sherman, the world’s most massive tree.
Now, in an ambitious bid to secure a future for them, a conservation group has struck an unusual deal to acquire the last, largest privately owned sequoia grove. The deal is the result of two decades of discussions between the not-for-profit conservation group Save the Redwoods and the Rouch family, which has owned the 530-acre Alder Creek grove since before the second world war.
