There are many different places in the world that tourists enjoy visiting. For example, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Chrysler building in New York or the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates… However, seeing the world’s tallest living tree is unfortunately not an item you can add to this list. The giant sequoia tree (or California pine) in California, whose location is kept secret from the general public, is not on the list of places you can visit.
Deep in Northern California’s Redwood National and State Park stands an impressively sized redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) nicknamed Hyperion. This giant tree is thought to be the tallest living tree in the world, with a mighty trunk standing at 115.92 metres, even taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The tree was discovered to be the tallest tree on our planet only in 2006 by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor. The exact location of the tree is being kept a secret to help preserve the tree and has never been made public. However, its coordinates were allegedly published by a website in 2015, leading to an increase in the number of hikers. There are no easy hiking trails to the tree, and those who want to take a closer look have to “make a path” through the rather dense vegetation.
However, it is not surprising that there are many visitors determined to visit Hyperion. That’s why the National Park Service has now closed the entire area, announcing that anyone who breaks the rules and wants to do so will be fined up to $5,000 and potentially imprisoned.
“The use has an impact on the vegetation and potentially the root system of the tree that people go there to visit,” Leonel Arguello, the park’s Natural Resources Manager, said in an interview with SFGate. “There was trash around and people were creating more sideways to go to the toilet. They were leaving used toilet paper and human waste; “This is not a good thing, it is not a good view.”
The closure is largely to prevent further damage to the surrounding ferns and vegetation in the area, while also protecting visitor welfare. It could also be very difficult for any emergency services to reach someone in distress, as there was no clear access road and GPS and mobile phone services were problematic.
“If someone was injured there, it would take some time to get to them and get them out of there,” Arguello said. “Those are all reasons why we need to be safe and protect our resources.”
While Hyperion is thought to be around 700-800 years old, the oldest tree in the world is thought to be the Great Basin bristlecone pine tree, also located in California and called Methuselah. This tree is estimated to be more than 4,850 years old, according to the BBC.
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