Despite state protections, the imperiled Joshua tree is battling power-hungry humans and a hostile climate. Joshua trees, those spiky, Seussian succulents found only in the higher elevations of the Mojave Desert, are inextricably linked to the history, mythology, and struggles that define the Southern California experience. Inspired by the story of Joshua guiding Israelites through Canaan with outstretched hands, mid-19th-century Mormon settlers nicknamed Yucca brevifolia, and it’s fitting that the label stuck. Conservationists revere the trees with an almost religious devotion, and the challenges to their survival – which started almost as soon as industrialists began turning their stalks to pulp for desert paper mills in the 1870s – are biblical in their scope and severity.