The New York Times is claiming in a long, front-page story today that recent fires killed "countless ancient redwoods" in California

The claim is false and should be immediately corrected

There is no evidence that the fire killed even a single ancient redwood tree

THREAD

As background, I love ancient redwood forests and helped save California's last significant grove of ancient redwoods in private hands between 1996 - 1999

This summer, I was the first to debunk claims that fires had killed ancient

“The protected trees, some 2,500 years old, were nearly wiped out by loggers in the 1800s,” claimed CBS News’ @JonVigliotti

“Now human-caused climate change has damaged or destroyed many of these ancient giants.”

“Big Basin Redwoods State Park has burned through,” reported New York Magazine’s @dwallacewells “Some, older than Muhammad, had stood for a thousand years by the time Europeans set foot in North America. The youngest are older than the Black Death."

But every school child who has visited one of California’s redwood parks knows from reading the signs at the visitor’s center and in front of the trailheads that old-growth redwood forests need fire to survive and thrive.