(Ezra David Romero/KQED) "It’ll look like there’s a green lawn out there with all the little sequoia seedlings," Caprio says. In contrast, high-severity fire that consumes nearly everything in its path is too hot for giant sequoia to survive. Giant sequoia seeds are released from their cones when fire burns them -- and they look a little like oatmeal. The first one is, it punches a hole in the forest - that allows there to be more light and more water for the sequoia seedlings. The most important agent to aid in the release of sequoia seeds is fire. Within the groves, however, the squirrel also cuts sequoia cones, not for their tiny seeds, but instead to chew on their green, fleshy cone scales. Whether controlled or wild, fire produces hot air, which travels up through the tree limbs and dries the cones. Giant sequoia are not only fire resilient, they are fire dependent for their regeneration, but fire exclusion has dramatically reduced their fire resilience. Fire-resilient giant sequoia are likely to survive a low-to m oderate-severity fire, which could really be largely restorative by reducing fuels and tree density. By the time the seeds hit the forest floor, the fire has moved on, and the earth has cooled. A fire gives them 3 things they need for regeneration. Outside sequoia groves. These dried cones eventually drop from the tree and release their seeds to the ground. Giant sequoias not only can survive forest fires, they thrive on them.When a sequoia grove catches fire, the heat opens up cones on the forest floor and releases the seeds inside. Clusters of Giant Sequoias may be found where fire once burned very hot, called a Hot Spot. Fire dries out the cones, enabling them to crack open and deposit their seeds on the forest floor. "It's not like sequoias need fire to spread their seeds, but they live in a fire-prone environment, ... A single sequoia can play host to more than 100,000 cones, said Sillett. His small-scale prescribed fires followed nearly a century of fire suppression, and resulted in the germination of sequoia seeds and the recruitment of sequoia seedlings - something that had not occurred in the absence of fire. In the 1960s, Dr. Richard Hartesveldt explored the connection between fire and sequoia regeneration. https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/why-the-giant-sequoia-needs-fire-to-grow Shellhammer finds that this tree squirrel commonly feeds on seeds of sugar pine, white fir, and ponderosa pine (Hartesveldt, et al, 1970). Both Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks have restored several groves using prescribed fire and some mechanical thinning, but most of the groves in the range still need restoration to be fire resilient in the warming climate. To the ground them to crack open and deposit their seeds on the forest floor, the has! 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