The Wollemi pine is so rare that it was thought to be extinct, known only from fossils, until 1994, when a park officer named David Noble rappelled into a narrow canyon in Australia and found trees he didn’t recognize. Only about 200 grow in the wild, all hidden in the canyons of Wollemi National Park. In the terrible bushfires of 2019 and 2020, the flames headed straight for them. A special team of firefighters set up an irrigation system to keep the trees wet, and air tankers dropped fire retardant around the groves. The fire swept through anyway. For days smoke hid everything. When it cleared, a few trees were charred and two had died, but the groves were saved.
