An Ancient Giant Sequoia Grove, Now and Forever
onSnapshots from Alder Creek, the largest unprotected giant sequoia grove on Earth. Photos by Max Forster.
Snapshots from Alder Creek, the largest unprotected giant sequoia grove on Earth. Photos by Max Forster.
And now, we can announce the pending acquisition of the largest unprotected sequoia grove. Alder Creek is located near Camp Nelson off Highway 190, and is surrounded by the Giant Sequoia National Monument. It’s no exaggeration to call Alder Creek a crown jewel of the giant sequoia. In both size and conservation value, it is comparable to the famous Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park’s iconic giant sequoia stand.
Save the Redwoods League today announced its opportunity to purchase Alder Creek, the largest remaining privately owned giant sequoia property in the world. The 530-acre Alder Creek property contains hundreds of ancient giant sequoia, 483 of which have a diameter of six feet or larger, including the Stagg Tree, the fifth-largest tree known in the world. Alder Creek is 200 miles from Los Angeles and is surrounded by Giant Sequoia National Monument.
Giant sequoia are remarkably fire resistant, so it was unusual to find at least 50 monarch trees (sequoia greater than three feet in diameter) that were killed in the Black Mountain Grove.
Everyone at Save the Redwoods League is so excited about the new giant sequoia curriculum for K-12 classrooms offered by the California State Parks PORTS® program, which stands for Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students. This distance learning program features the giant sequoia of Calaveras Big Trees State Park in its new unit and uses an innovative system incorporating interactive media and virtual reality platforms to teach about the ecosystems, wildlife, and history of California State Parks.
Come to Stand for the Redwoods—giant sequoia in this case—and reach for the stars on Thursday, October 11, from 7 to 9 p.m. We will join our Centennial Partner, Calaveras Big Trees Association, for one of their free stargazing nights …
Experience the giant sequoia groves at Calaveras Big Trees State Park and engage directly with League scientists and State Park professionals through the Giant Sequoia Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students (PORTS®) K-12 Distance Learning Program. PORTS is a …
The iconic Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park recently reopened to the public after a major restoration, thanks in part to Save the Redwoods League.
Save the Redwoods League, celebrating its centennial year as the only nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and stewarding giant sequoia and coast redwood forests in California, successfully raised $4 million to acquire Red Hill, one of the two largest unprotected giant sequoia properties in the world.
On June 8, 1906, exactly 112 years ago today, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, signed the Antiquities Act into law. It was this act that allowed the protection of places such as Muir Woods National Monument.
Save the Redwoods League, the only nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and stewarding coast redwood and giant sequoia forests in California, today announced that it has negotiated an agreement to purchase and protect the 160-acre Red Hill property, one of the two largest unprotected giant sequoia properties in the world. The property, on the South Fork of the Tule River, contains 110 ancient giant sequoia and provides a critical habitat for a variety of imperiled species including the Pacific fisher, Sierra marten and California spotted owl. Red Hill is located less than 200 miles from Los Angeles.
“America is changing demographically,” said Teresa Baker, founder of the African American Nature & Parks Experience. “People of color will soon be in the majority, and we need to do everything possible to connect them to the outdoors, to help them experience the power of nature.”
Save the Redwoods League is leading research to fully sequence the coast redwood and giant sequoia genomes — for the first time — utilizing conifer genetic sequencing techniques unavailable until now. By the end of this five-year project, the genome sequences and the screening tools developed will allow researchers to quickly assess genetic diversity in redwood forests to inform management plans that restore the health and resilience of these forests throughout their natural ranges as they face environmental stressors such as climate change.
We are sequencing the coast redwood and giant sequoia genomes. While the first steps in this project will happen in the laboratory, the goal is to rapidly put this new understanding of redwood DNA to work for conservation. To support vigorous coast redwood and giant sequoia forests in the decades ahead, we will need to protect not only the remarkable structure of the forest, but also protect the genetic diversity that underlies it.
Save the Redwoods League uses redwood science to guide our conservation work and we are ready to invest in new studies that will help us save the redwoods. Since 1997, we have supported redwood and giant sequoia forest research on …
I roamed through a few giant sequoia groves over the last week and did find a few mature giant sequoia that aren’t weathering the four-year drought well. Some of these afflicted giant sequoia simply were shedding leaves and their crowns …
When we take a close look at what makes redwoods survive and thrive, the trees have remarkable stories to tell. That’s what researchers discovered thanks to three studies supported by research grants from Save the Redwoods League over the past …
If you have read my recent blog posts, you can see a plant identification-theme forming. I promise it won’t be forever but today I have one more to throw at you. This time I will take you to the giant …
Wendy Baxter and Anthony Ambrose from Todd Dawson’s Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley have been tracking weather in the League’s Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative research plots in the coast redwood and giant sequoias forests. Check out their latest weather report …
The towering giant sequoias of Yosemite National Park are the iconic trees that catalyzed our Nation’s conservation movement, inspiring Congress in 1864 to designate both the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley “for public use, resort, and recreation”. Today, these mammoth …