The Latest Breaking News from Yosemite

Californians are shutting off their irrigation systems to reduce water consumption amid a devastating, climate-driven drought. In Yosemite National Park, sprinklers were turned on in hopes of slowing the climate-driven Washburn fire from threatening the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.

Firefighters have made significant progress against the Washburn fire, which began July 7 in Yosemite National Park and has burned nearly 5,000 acres.

Giant sequoias — thousand-year-old trees as large as 275 feet tall — came under threat this month from wildfires raging in central California’s Yosemite National Park, though firefighters have reported the blaze was contained before it encroached on trees in the park’s famous Mariposa Grove.

Giant sequoias still safe as firefighters face challenges from the warm and dry conditions fueling the blaze

A narrow escape for a national treasure fuels debate in Congress about how to reduce wildfires in Yosemite and other federal lands.

A wildfire that threatened a grove of California’s giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park is burning eastward into the Sierra National Forest

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Last year and the year before, in an unprecedented environmental disaster, wildfires in California’s Sequoia National Park and nearby national forests roared through treasured sequoia groves in the Southern Sierra Nevada, generating flames hundreds of feet high and killing nearly 20% of all the ancient…

LOS ANGELES — “Increased fire activity” was expected Tuesday as crews continued to battle the 3,221-acre Washburn fire in Yosemite National Park, but officials were growing more confident that the Mariposa Grove of ancient sequoias would survive the blaze.

A wildfire on the edge of a grove of California’s giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park has grown but remains partially contained

The initial news accounts sounded so similar to past years that they were almost repetitive: A wildfire had broken out in a national park and was burning in heavy brush and forest thick with dead and downed trees.

Firefighters are proactively working to protect the giant trees by deploying a ground sprinkler system and clearing any materials that could fuel the fire.