This pass. I learned that the tallest channelise in the world is a glide redwood named Hyperion. He stands a towering 379.1 feet (115.55 meters) tall! The location in a remote region of Redwood National Park is kept secret out of worry tourists would damage the forest’s ecosystem. And what kind of forest is an old-growth redwood plant? Remember the Ewoks? The forested planet of Endor was certainly my favorite setting in the feature Wars trilogy with it’s huge and majestic trees. You don’t need a spaceship to get there though. It’s all right here on hide…for now.
In the 1970’s only 15% of the Californian redwood forest’s original range remained in it’s pristine old growth state thanks to logging and development. Today a shocking 4%* of old growth forest all that remains! And the logging continues!
Sometimes it’s hard to visualize a figure like 4%. Here are some examples that illustrate the magnitude of what has happened to our redwood forest:
That’s right any portion of redwood forest replanted today would take another 2,000 years to return to the pristine state we see in the present remaining plant!
I want to go to the redwood forest myself to undergo it in person. I want our ancestors 57 generations from now to be able to undergo the same thing to see grand redwood forests planted today and hopefully somehow still undergo rich biological diversity in their world though it slips away from us each passing day.
* - I found these figures online but I’m not sure how recent they are. They refer to old growth redwood forests (you know with thousands-year-old trees and their original ecosystem intact) but an even smaller portion is protected park land. According to Jeff of. California environmentalists are reporting less than 2% remain! Anyhow this is far too small a number. It wouldn’t take more than a very localized disaster to wipe out what remains!
Related article:
http://www.kevindanenberg.com/blog/archives/36
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