You’ve probably seen the photos. People looking like tiny ants standing next to a trunk that’s wider than a city bus. It’s hard to wrap your head around the scale of a Giant Sequoia until you’re actually there, smelling the damp soil and looking up into a canopy that seems to touch the clouds. But there’s a nagging question that pops up every time a wildfire makes the evening news: how many sequoia trees are left?
Honestly, the answer is a bit of a gut punch. It’s not just one number. It’s a shifting target that scientists are still trying to pin down after some of the most devastating years in forest history.
For a long time, we thought these trees were invincible. They have bark that can be two feet thick. They’re full of tannins that ward off bugs and rot. They literally need fire to reproduce—the heat opens their cones. But the rules of the game changed recently. We’re not just talking about "natural" cycles anymore. We are looking at a population that has been squeezed into a tiny geographic sliver of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and lately, that sliver has been catching some serious heat.
The Raw Numbers: What the Inventory Says
If you want a hard count, you have to look at "large" sequoias, usually defined as those with a diameter of four feet or more at chest height. Before 2020, experts estimated there were about 75,000 to 80,000 of these monarch trees left on Earth. They live in roughly 70 to 75 scattered groves, all located on the western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada.
Then came the 2020 and 2021 fire seasons.
The Castle Fire and the KNP Complex Fire weren't like the fires these trees evolved with. They were high-intensity "crown fires" that reached the very tops of the trees. According to reports from the National Park Service and researchers like Nathan Stephenson, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, we lost between 13% and 19% of the world’s large sequoias in just those two years. That is a staggering loss. We are talking about 10,000 to 14,000 ancient trees gone in a blink.
So, if you do the math, how many sequoia trees are left today? Most current estimates put the number of mature, large-diameter Giant Sequoias somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000.
That might sound like a lot. It’s not. When you consider that these trees can live for 3,000 years, losing nearly a fifth of the population in twenty-four months is a biological emergency. These aren't like pine trees you can just replant and replace in a generation.
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Why They Are Dying (It's Not Just Fire)
It's tempting to blame everything on the flames. But it’s more complicated. Drought is the silent killer. Giant Sequoias are essentially giant water pumps. A single mature tree can pull up thousands of gallons of water a day during the peak of summer.
When the Sierra Nevada experiences multi-year droughts, the trees get stressed. Their immune systems—if you want to call them that—weaken. For the first time in recorded history, biologists like Christy Brigham at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have seen bark beetles actually killing healthy sequoias. Usually, the trees just drown the beetles in sap. Now? The trees are too thirsty to fight back.
And then there's the "fuel" problem. For a century, humans were really good at putting out every single little fire. We thought we were protecting the forest. We weren't. We were just letting sticks, bushes, and dead wood pile up on the forest floor. When a fire finally did start, it had so much "fuel" that it burned hot enough to cook the trees from the inside out.
Where You Can Still See Them
If you’re planning a trip to see these legends, don’t panic. There are still incredible places to experience them.
Sequoia National Park is the big one. It’s home to the General Sherman Tree. By volume, it's the largest living thing on the planet. It’s still standing. The park service actually wrapped the base of it in fire-resistant aluminum foil during the KNP Complex fire to save it. It worked.
Kings Canyon National Park sits right next door. It hosts the General Grant Tree, which is the "Nation's Christmas Tree." The groves here are sprawling and offer a bit more breathing room than the crowded Sherman area.
Yosemite National Park has the Mariposa Grove. It was recently restored with better boardwalks to protect the shallow roots of the trees. It’s iconic, but it’s also one of the most visited, so expect company.
Calaveras Big Trees State Park is further north. It’s where the "discovery" of sequoias by Westerners first made headlines in the 1850s. It’s a bit more accessible for people coming from the Bay Area.
The "Little" Sequoias: A Reason for Hope
While we focus on the giants, there’s a massive surge of new life happening. In the areas that burned just "right"—hot enough to open cones but not hot enough to kill the soil—there are millions of tiny green sprouts.
I’ve stood in a burn scar a year after a fire and seen thousands of sequoia seedlings per acre. They look like tiny feathers sticking out of the ash. This is the species trying to save itself. The question is whether our climate will stay stable enough for those seedlings to survive the next 500 years.
What We Get Wrong About Sequoias vs. Redwoods
People mix these up all the time.
Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are the "fat" ones. They grow in the mountains. They are massive in terms of total wood volume. Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the "tall" ones. They grow along the foggy California coast.
Redwoods are actually doing okay. There are millions of them, and they can sprout from stumps. Giant Sequoias? They only grow from seeds. They are much more vulnerable. If a sequoia grove burns down completely and the seeds don't take, that grove is gone forever. There is no backup plan.
How to Help and What to Do Next
The future of the sequoias isn't written in stone. There’s a lot of work being done by the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition, a group of tribal, state, and federal agencies.
If you want to contribute to the survival of these trees, here is the most effective way to act:
- Support Prescribed Burns: This is the most important thing. We have to let "good" fire back into the groves to clear out the brush. It looks messy, and the smoke is annoying, but it’s the only way to prevent the big, catastrophic fires.
- Visit Responsibly: Stay on the trails. Sequoia roots are surprisingly shallow—sometimes only a few feet deep—and they spread out far. Stepping on the ground around the tree compacts the soil and can actually starve the tree of oxygen and water.
- Donate to Restoration: Organizations like the Save the Redwoods League are actively buying private land that contains sequoia groves to put them under permanent protection. They are also leading the charge in replanting areas that were burned too severely for natural regeneration.
- Volunteer for "Seed Sorting": Some parks have programs where volunteers help process the millions of seeds collected from the forest floor to be used in nurseries.
The number of sequoias left is smaller than it used to be. That's a fact. But the 60,000 or so that remain are some of the most resilient organisms on the planet. Seeing them is a bucket-list experience that changes your perspective on time itself. Go see them while you can, and support the efforts to make sure they're still there for the people born a thousand years from now.
To make the most of your visit, check the current air quality and road closures on the National Park Service website before heading out. High-altitude weather is unpredictable, and many groves are inaccessible during the winter months without snowshoes or 4WD. Plan for a midweek trip to avoid the mid-day crowds at the General Sherman tree, and try to explore the lesser-known groves like Muir Grove or the Redwood Mountain Grove for a more solitary experience.