There's no good way to describe the overwhelming awe of California's General Sherman. At three blue whales tall, 400 elephant heavy, two car lengthss wide, this giant among giant sequoias is the largest known tree in the world. But as we learned, even one of the biggest, baddest things nature can produce are far from invincible, especially now. We were there inside Sequoia National Park when a team of scientists scaled it for the first time because, well, they're worried. New Sequoia threats like tiny invasive beetles are compounding climate change, producing larger droughts and bigger fires.

We now know in the era of climate change that we have fires of great intensity, and they have started to take its toll on the population.

In 2020, the Castle fire killed about 14% of all giant sequoias. The next year, in the next fire, we lost another 5%.

We thought that, wow, this could be a problem.

Sequoia expert Christie Brigham is leading the effort, along with the National Park Service, to protect the trees.

We had 27 groves that burned in those fires. The death of the big trees in those areas was 90% or higher. So that's not good. That's not in their evolutionary history.

The agency is now part of a larger organization, including the state, the Forest Service, and local Indigenous tribes called the giant Sequoia Lands Coalition. And they've been busy. What you're looking at, these are actually giant sequoias. They are, of course, the seedling version. Park officials here say they planted about 60,000 of them in places where they're needed most, which is important. There's only 80 groves across the entire world.

Well, we've got another three and a half feet.

But an opposing group of scientists says, well, to put it bluntly, they're barking up the wrong tree.

This was not a catastrophe. This was not the doom of the Sequoia Groves. It's actually the hope for the future of these groves.

Chad Hansen is leading the charge against what the Sequoia Lands Coalition is doing. But to understand why, you have to understand how California's wildfire fighting strategy is changing. California has a history of trying to suppress every fire. Just ask Smoky the Bear. Only you can prevent forest fires. But in the last few years, as wildfires got more and more out of control, the state has moved toward fighting fire with fire, at least a little bit. The idea is that controlled burns, now sometimes called prescribed burns, will help cut down on fuel for when a major fire strikes. That's not controversial, but just how much human intervention is needed is.

The way we've been doing things, suppressing fires, keeping fires out of the groves, that that's actually killing the sequoia groves.

Hansen points out that the sequoia's bark serves as armor, able to withstand heat that would destroy other species. The flames are a big part of how they naturally sprout. The fire opening up thousands of tiny cones that fall from the trees, releasing seeds that eventually take root. And he's concerned about two major forest management techniques being used, thinning the forest by cutting down smaller trees and removing dead debris.

We're removing some of the very best wildlife habitat in the forest because it turns out that a standing dead tree, what we call a snag, is actually more important for more wildlife species than a standing live tree of the same size. Wow, it's not even close. That's the interesting thing. It's not even close? It's not even close. Trees.

So a dead tree has more value to wildlife than a live tree.

Far more. It's the single most ecologically important element of a forest ecosystem, hands down. No comparison.

Last year, he and several advocate groups sued the National Forest Service to stop what was coined the Fuels Reduction Project. The National Forest Service responding that its strategy is as old as some of these massive trees themselves, saying in part, over a century of scientific data confirms that strategically designed fuels reduction treatments can reduce wildfire risks. Those risks, just too high for the forest managers, task with protecting our most majestic grows. They believe that famous old General Sherman could use a human helping hand.

We're in the forever business. If you were killing 20% of all the millennial sequoias every few years, would you have this forest? You wouldn't.

Steve Patterson, NBC News.

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