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In a deal to preserve some of the planet’s rarest and most massive living things, a Bay Area conservation group has signed an agreement to purchase the second-largest grove of giant sequoia trees left in private ownership in the world.
Save the Redwoods League, based in San Francisco, will pay $3.3 million to buy 160 acres of sequoias — some more than 250 feet tall and 1,500 years old — in an area known as the Red Hill property. The trees sit in a remote, mountainous part of Tulare County adjacent to Giant Sequoia National Monument in the Southern Sierra, and survived a logging boom that decimated similar ancient trees from the 1850s through the 1950s.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Sam Hodder, president of Save the Redwoods League. “There are so few places in the giant sequoia range where there are old growth giant sequoias that are not protected, and this is one of the biggest.”
A cousin of the coast redwood, which is the world’s tallest tree, giant sequoias are the largest living tree by volume on Earth, a prehistoric species that exists today only in 68 groves in the Sierra from the Tahoe National Forest to the Sequoia National Forest east of Bakersfield. Nearly all of the remaining groves are preserved on public land within Yosemite National Park, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and Sequoia National Forest.
Conservation groups have worked for generations to secure permanent protections, acre-by-acre, for each grove.
There are at least 110 old-growth sequoias on the Red Hill property, located at about 6,000 feet elevation along the South Fork of the Tule River.
“You walk through, and every corner, every lip of the hill everywhere you look, is a tree that has been growing for millennia,” Hodder said, “with that remarkable rusty red bark and those gigantic branches. It is a truly special place. It is one of those places where you know you are at the heart of nature.”
The league signed an agreement to purchase the property from the Nicholas family, of Porterville, a small town about 20 miles to the west of the grove. The family has owned the land since 1970, said Mike Nicholas, when his mother Isabelle Nicholas, a real estate broker, first purchased it. She died in 1994.
“She was just in love with those redwood trees,” he said. “She always dreamed about having the opportunity of owning and being involved with preserving some of the trees.”
Nicholas said his mother allowed other species of trees that had grown thick around the majestic giant sequoias to be thinned, but she never applied for a permit to cut any of the sequoias.
“When she bought it, it was very remote and isolated,” said Mike Nicholas. “There was a logging company that had quite a few holdings in that area. When my mom stumbled into it that was very fortunate for those trees. She put the brakes on any cutting.”
The property is home to spotted owls, black bears, Pacific fishers and is part of the ever-enlarging California condor range. Creeks running through it have rainbow trout. Last year, a rain gauge recorded 75 inches of rain there, Nicholas said.
Nicholas and his father, Ralph, who died in 1988, did several controlled burns on the land over the years to thin out dead wood and reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. They also planted trees in some areas to control erosion. Nicholas, 69, said he wanted to sell the land to Save the Redwoods League, one of the state’s oldest conservation groups, to ensure it remains protected.
He said the tallest tree on the property is 258 feet tall, roughly the height of a 25-story building. By comparison, he said proudly, the stone heads of American presidents carved into Mount Rushmore are 60 feet tall. And Niagara Falls is 167 feet high.
“What I’m hoping is that there will be some trail construction and public visitation,” he said. “We’ve preserved this so that it didn’t get destroyed. It would be a shame that something like this wouldn’t be enjoyed by the public. It’s a national treasure.
“It’s an awesome feeling to grab a hold of something that’s so huge,” Nicholas added. “You stand next to a tree that is 20 feet in diameter, it takes your breath away.”
Hodder said at first the property will not be open to the public. Save the Redwoods League plans to work with biologists to draw up a management plan, and will continue to thin out Ponderosa pine, fir and other trees that have grown too thick in places, to reduce the risk of a large fire damaging the giant sequoias, and to provide less competition for water, he said.
He said the group would like to eventually transfer the land to the U.S. Forest Service for inclusion in Giant Sequoia National Monument, a part of Sequoia National Forest set aside for special protection in 2000 by President Bill Clinton.
If the largest remaining giant sequoia grove in private ownership — Alder Creek Grove, which is located near the Red Hill Grove and is about four times larger — ever comes up for sale, Hodder said he is interested.
Save the Redwoods League has preserved 214,000 acres of coast redwood and giant sequoia since its founding 100 years ago in 1918.
“Our objective is to protect all of the ancient giant sequoia,” he said.
