The planting of single-species conifer plantations and the practice of fire exclusion has resulted in two high intensity wildfires since the end of the logging era, further degrading the giant sequoia habitat.

Another notable tree in the grove is the Muir Snag, which is believed to have been 3,500 years old at the time of its death, making it one of the oldest known giant sequoias.

Colonel George W. Stewart, a newspaper publisher and editor, played a crucial role in linking local efforts to preserve giant sequoias to the national conservation movement.

The area did not receive federal protected from logging until it was designated as part of Sequoia National Monument through a presidential proclamation by Bill Clinton in April 2000.

An indiscriminate slaughter had let in the sun, its enemy; had dried the springs, which were its lifeblood; and such tearing and ripping as we had seen at Hume had rendered the soil, its mother, unfit except for barren grass.

A few lonely redwoods, spared out of wantonness, had done their best to plant the spaces, but the younglings near them could only patch the ground; the pines and firs had well-nigh given up the struggle.

In the great stumps themselves, in blocks and fragments scattered over the soil, in the logs which choked the streams, was more dead and wasted lumber than a forester could hope to grow on so many acres in a hundred years.

The story of the Appalachians was being told again, and more loudly.In the 1930s, Sequoia National Park commissioner Walter Fry and superintendent John R. White, “marveled that man had been able by crude methods to do so much damage.”[10]: 20 Converse Basin has not recovered over a century after it was overlogged.

They are prone to pine beetles and have disrupted the local water cycle, leading to an increase in dead trees and dense fuel loads.