California fights fire with fire to protect giant sequoias
Los Angeles (AFP) - The so-far successful battle this month in California to save the world's biggest trees from ever-worsening forest blazes seems to offer an important lesson: You can fight fire with fire. Human-caused climate change has made the western United States hotter, drier and more vulnerable to increasingly destructive wildfires, which have this year taken a horrific toll on the region's forests. That has included threatening huge sequoias like the General Sherman, which looms 275 feet (83 meters) above the forest floor. Firefighters were able to beat back the flames as they ate in...