Drought, fires and beetles — California’s forests are dying. Is it too late to save them?

San Francisco Chronicle

With increasing heat and drought across the West, one of the largest tree die-offs in modern California history reached new heights last year and, in combination with wildfires, has left much of the state’s once sprawling green forests browned, blackened and in critically dire shape.

An estimated 9.5 million trees died from bugs, disease and dehydration in 2021, according to new aerial survey data from the U.S. Forest Service. The losses were slightly less than what was recorded in surveys two years earlier but still well above what scientists consider normal. The run of mortality since 2010 now exceeds 172 million trees.

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