REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — The National Park Service is warning visitors who may want to try to visit the world’s tallest tree that they will face a fine and potential jail time if caught.
Hyperion, named the world’s tallest tree when it was found in 2006, is inside Redwood National Park. In a new alert, the National Park Service is alerting visitors that visiting the tree is illegal.
In a statement posted to its website, the National Park Service said, “There is no trail to Hyperion. Hyperion is located within a closed area. Hiking within this closure could result in a $5,000 fine and 6 months in jail.”
Hyperion stands 380 feet tall and was named after a character in Greek mythology, CNN reported. Its trunk diameter is 13 feet.
Because of its location, visitors to Hyperion have trampled the vegetation around it and degraded the base of the tree, NPS said.
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“The usage was having an impact on the vegetation and potentially the root system of the very tree that people are going there to visit,” Leonel Arguello, Redwood National Park’s chief of natural resources, told SFGATE. “There was trash, and people were creating even more side trails to use the bathroom.”
On its website, NPS said that the logic “But I am only one person, I won’t make an impact” is false: “Thousands of people are likely thinking the same thing when hiking off trail. Forests grow by the inch and die by the foot. A single visitor can make a drastic negative change to the environment.”
NPS also pointed out that while Hyperion may be the tallest and one of the best-known trees, its trunk is small in comparison to others, and its height cannot be appreciated from the ground. The area around the tree, because it is off a trail, is also dangerous.
“If someone were to get hurt down there, it’d be a while before we could get to them and extract them,” Arguello told SFGATE. “These are all reasons why we’re playing it safe and protecting our resources.”
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