America's Giant Sequoias teeter on Extinction. A real life what and whodunnit?

Fire Fighters among Giant Sequoias: Credit USDA

Giant Sequoias are the planet’s largest living things and have been on the North American continent since at least the last ice age some 12 thousand years ago. Some individual trees alive today have stood in what is now the United States for more than three thousand years. Or put another way, today's Giant Sequoias were seedlings at about the same time humans were first building their civilizations in Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, China, and Egypt.

We are told that trees are a renewable resource and many are. But a three thousand year old Sequoia is not renewable, at least not for another 120 human generations.

Today we are losing Sequoia trees at rates and by means unseen in the past. More than 40 recently burned in California's Windy Fire. These trees stood in the same spot for millennia. They bear the scars of past fires, drought, floods, climate change, blizzards, lightning strikes, insect infestations, animal burrowing, and more. Yet, they survived all these threats.

How? What could be the critical difference that now endangers the very existence of trees that stood for a million sunrises and sunsets? What does it say about us if these mighty leviathans go extinct during our watch? And what will future generations say if we let it happen?

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Sean Smith is an award winning conservationist and author. He is a former National Park Ranger at Yellowstone, Glacier, and the North Cascades. He is a TEDx speaker, and private pilot. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1989 with a degree in Political Science. He got his master's in Natural Resources Management from Central Washington University in 1996. He currently runs Washington State's efforts to reduce and eliminate toxic chemicals from consumer products and serves as the Mayor Pro Tem of Covington.

He has been writing stories and books since he was a child and currently writes national park thrillers from the shadow of Mount Rainier.  All his novels can be found here: Mr. Sean D Smith