Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Firefighters in California reported more progress today in the two-week battle against a huge wildfire near Yosemite National Park.
A NewsHour team has been covering one of their top priorities: protecting an ancient grove of giant sequoias in the park.
MAN: Well, we're almost to the big tree.
KWAME HOLMAN (Newshour): Even as wildfires raged miles away on the other end of Yosemite, a steady stream of visitors this week hiked up a scenic trail to see one of the park's biggest attractions, the giant sequoias.
These massive trees, which are unique to California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. The grandest in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove is the so-called Grizzly Giant, estimated to be 1,800 years old, and it's no stranger to fire.
Many sequoias here bear huge black scars from natural wildfires that have burned through these forests for thousands of years. But now an unprecedented fire, the largest in Sierra history, is threatening two of Yosemite's three giant sequoia groves.
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JOHN WALLACE, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: These fires are just becoming more and more common now.
I mean, since 2000, we have had all these 500,000-acre, 600,000-acre fires, these mega-fires. Before 2000, a 100,000-acre fire was huge. But things have been warming up, drying out. And then we have got these high fuel loads in a lot of places. And that's contributing to these bigger, more intense fires.
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