Tonight, in California a fast-growing wildfire in Yosemite National Park is threatening the park’s famous giant sequoias. Some of the largest and oldest trees in the world. These national treasures have survived everything for thousands of years, and they’re now in jeopardy because of climate change. Hundreds of firefighters are battling the fires under brutal conditions, with heavy terrain, blistering temperatures and low humidity. The Washburn fire, which grew more than five-fold over the weekend, is now more than twenty-three hundred acres and it’s twenty five percent contained. Firefighters have set up special containment lines around the sequoias and even set up a sprinkler system to help protect some of the most famous trees in the planet. In nearby Utah, record heat and high winds are fueling two massive wildfires that have burned a total of more than eighteen square miles.

Park Rangers tell me they’re hopeful they can save these sequoias but in the past few minutes, we have watched this fire explode around these trees, setting a dark plume of toxic smoke up into the sky. Tonight, the world’s largest trees are under threat. At Yosemite National Park, firefighters are enduring scorching heat as out of control wildfires continue to rage, and as they race to save a treasure. Five hundreds of Yosemite giant sequoias are threatened by this fire. These are trees that in some cases, have survived all times of weather for thousands of years. At least one, the Grizzly Giant is nearly three thousand years old. The battle plan now to protect these ancient trees, fight fire with a new source of water. We scaled a two-hundred-foot sequoia with researchers in 2019. At the time, they believed the iconic trees were protected from wildfires thanks to their two-foot-thick bark. That’s no longer the case, California’s drought, worsen by climate change, has already taken a terrible toll on the sequoias, ten of thousands have been killed. In the past six years, eighty five percent of the giant sequoias habitat in the Sierra Nevada have been hit by wildfire, compared to just twenty five percent the previous century. A more immediate concern are flames so intense, that the fire is creating its own weather. Updrafts are sending debris into the sky. One air tanker reported a near miss. Tonight, the worst of the fire is burning away from the sequoias, but in a remote area that is hard to reach. Fire crews hope setting back burns like this will stop this blaze from growing.