'All the trees are dead': An ancient California forest has been wiped out

Roughly 500 years ago in California's High Sierra, pine cones dropped to the ground and a cycle began. The Aztec Empire was falling. The printing press was new. The seedlings grew.

Half a millennia later, U.S. Forest Service scientists began testing strategies to save these now ancient and massive trees in the little-known area east of Fresno called the Teakettle Experimental Forest. They had plans to light a huge prescribed burn to clear overgrowth next year.

But then the Garnet Fire ignited amid a lightning storm and scorched all 3,000 federally protected acres on its path through the Sierra National Forest.

"There are large swaths where everything is dead - all the trees are dead," said Scott Scherbinski, a biologist and program manager at the Climate & Wildfire Institute. "It will be a start-over event for this forest."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trees-dead-ancient-california-forest-110017974.html