A sequoia forest in Detroit? Plantings to improve air quality and mark Earth Day

DETROIT (AP) — Arborists are turning vacant land on Detroit's eastside into a small urban forest, not of elms, oaks and red maples indigenous to the city but giant sequoias, the world's largest trees that can live for thousands of years.

The project on four lots will not only replace long-standing blight with majestic trees, but could also improve air quality and help preserve the trees that are native to California’s Sierra Nevada, where they are threatened by ever-hotter wildfires.

Detroit is the pilot city for the Giant Sequoia Filter Forest. The nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has donated dozens of sequoia saplings that were planted Tuesday by staff and volunteers from Arboretum Detroit, another nonprofit, to mark Earth Day.

For now, they're just saplings, about a foot (30 centimeters) tall. But they're expected to grow to about 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall in about 10 years

Within the last decade, 11 other sequoias had been planted on vacant lots owned by Arboretum Detroit and nine more on private properties around the neighborhood. Each now reaches 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.5 meters) tall. Arboretum Detroit has another 200 saplings in its nursery.

Archangel Ancient Tree Archive co-founder David Milarch says his group also plans to plant sequoias in Los Angeles, Oakland, California, and London.

The massive conifers can grow to more than 300 feet (90 meters) tall with a more than 30-foot (9-meter) circumference at the base. They can live for more than 3,000 years.

“Here’s a tree that is bigger than your house when it’s mature, taller than your buildings, and lives longer than you can comprehend,” said Andrew “Birch” Kemp, Arboretum Detroit's executive director.

The sequoias will eventually provide a full canopy that protects everything beneath, he said.

“It may be sad to call these .5- and 1-acre treescapes forests,” Kemp said. “We are expanding on this and shading our neighborhood in the only way possible, planting lots of trees.”

Giant sequoias are resilient against disease and insects, and are usually well-adapted to fire. Thick bark protects their trunks and their canopies tend to be too high for flames to reach. But climate change is making the big trees more vulnerable to wildfires out West, Kemp said.

“The fires are getting so hot that its even threatening them,” he said.

Archangel, based in Copemish, Michigan, preserves the genetics of old-growth trees for research and reforestation.

The sequoia saplings destined for Detroit are clones of two giants known as Stagg — the world's fifth-largest tree — and Waterfall, of the Alder Creek grove, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.

In 2010, Archangel began gathering cones and climbers scaled high into the trees to gather new-growth clippings from which they were able to develop and grow saplings.

A decade later, a wildfire burned through the grove. Waterfall was destroyed but Stagg survived. They will both live on in the Motor City.

Sequoias need space, and metropolitan Detroit has plenty of it.

In the 1950s, 1.8 million people called Detroit home, but the city's population has since shrunk to about one-third of that number. Tens of thousands of homes were left empty and neglected.

While the city has demolished at least 24,000 vacant structures since it emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, thousands of empty lots remain. Kemp estimates that only about 10-15% of the original houses remain in the neighborhood where the sequoias will grow.

“There’s not another urban area I know of that has the kind of potential that we do to reforest," he said. “We could all live in shady, fresh air beauty. It's like no reason we can’t be the greenest city in the world.”

“They’re safer here ... we don’t have wildfires like (California)," Birch continued. "The soil stays pretty moist, even in the summer. They like to have that winter irrigation, so when the snow melts they can get a good drink.”

Caring for the sequoias will fall to future generations, so Milarch has instigated what he calls “tree school” to teach Detroit’s youth how and why to look after the new trees.

“We empower our kids to teach them how to do this and give them the materials and the way to do this themselves,” Milarch said. “They take ownership. They grow them in the classrooms and plant them around the schools. They know we’re in environmental trouble.”

Some of them may never have even walked in a forest, Kemp said.

“How can we expect children who have never seen a forest to care about deforestation on the other side of the world?" Kemp said. "It is our responsibility to offer them their birthright.”

City residents are exposed to extreme air pollution and have high rates of asthma. The Detroit sequoias will grow near a heavily industrial area, a former incinerator and two interstates, he said.

Kemp’s nonprofit has already planted about 650 trees — comprising around 80 species — in some 40 lots in the area. But he believes the sequoias will have the greatest impact.

“Because these trees grow so fast, so large and they’re evergreen they’ll do amazing work filtering the air here,” Kemp said. “We live in pretty much a pollution hot spot. We’re trying to combat that. We’re trying to breathe clean air. We’re trying to create shade. We’re trying to soak up the stormwater, and I think sequoias — among all the trees we plant — may be the strongest, best candidates for that.”

A giant sequoia tree is shown planted at an Arboretum Detroit parcel in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Robyn Redding, from left, Jozie Bullard, Gianna Holliday and Andrew "Birch" Kemp walk to a Arboretum Detroit parcel in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Robyn Redding carries mulch to a sequoia tree in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Andrew "Birch" Kemp checks a tag on a planted sequoia tree seedling in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

David McGuffie dumps mulch on a sequoia tree seedling in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Robyn Redding plants a sequoia tree seedling in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Gianna Holliday carries a sequoia tree seedling to plant in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Andrew "Birch" Kemp helps clear debris from a Arboretum Detroit planting site in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Robyn Redding, from left, and Gianna Holliday plant a sequoia tree seedling as Andrew "Birch" Kemp brings mulch in Detroit, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)