There is a bumper crop of cones on our known blister rust resistant sugar pines around Lake Tahoe this year! With the critical help of arborist Ben Cavalier and our own Edric Alvarez, we have been busy climbing these “seed trees” to collect as many of their precious cones as possible for our restoration work. …
Watering baby seedlings through the hot summer months is enormously beneficial for their survival. We are seeing up to 50% greater survival on watered sites, which is terrific! We are SUPER grateful to all of our fantastic volunteers that have joined our watering events this summer on North and South Shores. Rather than attending our …
This feature on how Michael Taylor and Steve Sillett’s team discovered the second and third tallest giant sequoias in Sequoia National Park last summer – only for the KNP Complex Fire to rip through the area just months later – is hauntingly appropriate as the Washburn Fire burns around Yosemite National Park’s Mariposa Grove of …
#2 and #3 Tallest Giant Sequoias Found – and Lost? Read More »
Tahoe Quarterly Feature on Michael Taylor and the Sugar Pine Foundation by Matt Jones California is home to some of the biggest trees in the world. Redwoods, Douglas firs and Sitka spruces that tower over the lush forests of the north coast. Giant sequoias of incomprehensible girth scattered across disparate groves of the Sierra Nevada. Stately …
OUR NEW PROGRAM ASSISTANT & LEAD WATER WARRIOR We are thrilled to have Lauren Benefield on our team this summer – and (hopefully) beyond! She immediately applied to our summer part-time job opportunity and, when we met her, we knew that she’d be the perfect person to lead our summer Watering Evenings and offer general operational …
Genevieve Villemaire is a natural leader and wears many hats in our community – including a brand new Sugar Pine Foundation cap! In addition to working full time at the US Forest Service and being a dedicated mother and outdoorswoman, Genevieve co-leads the local Cub Scout Pack 592. This spring, Genevieve and her pack came …
Spotlight on Genevieve Villemaire: Volunteer Extraordinaire Read More »
Saturday, March 19th was rainy, gray, muddy and wet, wet, wet but the conditions did not stop over 50 volunteers from planting 900 ponderosa pine seedlings in the Caldor Fire scar along Mormon Emigrant Road! The planting was organized in partnership with the El Dorado National Forest’s Placerville Ranger District, who had already cleared and prepped …
Michael Taylor and Steve Sillett measured the world’s second tallest known Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in Redwood National and State Parks this past Saturday, March 26, 2022. The tree stands 99.3 m tall (325.8 ft) – only 0.2 m (almost 8 inches!) shy of the reigning champion that the duo discovered just this past July 2021 in a …
JUST DISCOVERED: New #2 Tallest Douglas-fir in the World! Read More »
by Tressa Gibbard When you are invited to join world famous tree hunter Michael Taylor on a tall tree expedition, you do not decline. Even if you do not know what you are in for, you accept the invitation and learn what you will be doing along the way. Such was the case when I …
Finding the Elusive 100m Non-Redwood With Michael Taylor and Steve Sillett Read More »
The Sugar Pine Foundation is friends with two of the leading discoverers of the world’s tallest trees: Michael Taylor and Dr. Steve Sillett. For 30 years, Taylor and Sillett have slogged through dense, punishing underbrush and up and down vertiginous ravines in search of the tallest trees on Earth. Their pursuits are the subject of …
Michael Taylor & Steve Sillett Discover World’s 10 Tallest Douglas-firs Read More »