The past 15 months have been devastating for the majestic trees, as fires destroyed an estimated 13 to 19 percent of their population, officials said.

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By Vimal Patel

Three wildfires in California in the past 15 months killed or mortally wounded thousands of mature giant sequoias, accounting for an estimated 13 to 19 percent of the world’s population of the majestic trees, officials said on Friday.

A National Park Service report estimated that two fires in September, sparked by a lighting storm, caused 2,261 to 3,637 mature giant sequoias — or between 3 to 5 percent of the population of mature giant sequoias — to be killed or so severely burned that they were expected to die within five years. Mature giant sequoias have a diameter of more than four feet.

Giant sequoias, which are found on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in California, can live thousands of years on their way to dwarfing most everything around them. These trees include iconic national treasures like the General Sherman Tree, which is considered the world’s largest tree, standing at 275 feet tall with a diameter of 36 feet at the base.

The death of the trees in staggering numbers is the product of a “deadly combination” of unnaturally dense forests caused by fire suppression that began about 150 years ago and increasingly intense droughts driven by climate change, Clay Jordan, superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, said in an interview on Friday night.

“That becomes a recipe for a catastrophic fire that threatens our sequoia groves, the health of our forests and, at the same time, threatens our communities,” he said. The mortality rates in the sequoias are unprecedented, he said.

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