Like many people who work on forestry issues in California, Jim Branham, executive officer of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, is still trying to wrap his head around the drought’s toll on the region’s forests and the 66 million dead trees reported in the Sierra Nevada last month.

“It’s hard to comprehend,” he said, especially considering that in some areas of the Southern Sierra communities may see 85 percent of the trees around them dead or dying. “The magnitude of the problem is staggering,” he said.