海角大神

The news was heartbreaking. California鈥檚 oldest state park, home to coast redwood trees as tall as skyscrapers and dating back to the Roman Empire, suffered extensive damage in this month鈥檚 massive fires.

Big Basin Redwoods State Park, as it has been known and loved for generations, 鈥渋s gone,鈥� reported聽the Sempervirens Fund, a redwood conservancy that helped found the park in 1902. 鈥淲e feel like we have lost an old friend.鈥�

That sorrow rippled across the United States, as Americans faced the possibility that one of the country鈥檚 most beloved natural treasures could be gone forever, one more tragedy in a year filled with turmoil, uncertainty, and loss.聽But despite the apparent devastation,聽most of the redwood conifers are not actually dead, say scientists. These聽Sequoia sempervirens, or 鈥渆ver-living sequoia,鈥澛爃ave endured for centuries. And this spring, they聽will undoubtedly sprout mini-trees around their bases and start to leaf out. The blackened sentinels, towering in the park about 45 miles south of San Francisco, 鈥渨ill very quickly recover,鈥� says Mark Finney, a research forester at the U.S. Forest Service鈥檚 Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana.

In an interview with the Monitor, Dr. Finney explains why these trees are so resilient and what this 18,000-acre park cascading down the mountains toward the Pacific Ocean will soon look like. It鈥檚 something he鈥檚 seen before. Or close to it.

About 30 years ago, when he was a graduate student in forestry at the University of California, Berkeley, he took part in prescribed burnings of coast redwoods with California鈥檚 Department of Parks and Recreation. The goal was to see how the redwoods would react under different fire circumstances.

The burnings were 鈥渟omewhat controversial鈥� because redwoods are an 鈥渆motional issue,鈥� given their near wipeout by lumber mills after the gold rush,聽and their incredible size and longevity.聽They are the tallest trees on Earth and some are more than 2,000 years old. The trees grow only along the coast of California,聽with a toehold in Oregon,聽though fossils that go back millions of years can be found around the world.聽

The burns were conducted in 1989 and 1990 on plots of 鈥測oung growth鈥� forest 鈥� trees that were 150 years or newer 鈥� in two state parks north of San Francisco, in Humboldt and Sonoma counties.聽They tested for varying fuel consumption and fire intensity by burning in the spring and fall, and setting fires upslope with the wind, and downslope against it.

鈥淚t was really surprising,鈥� says Dr. Finney. Under the most severe conditions, all the foliage was killed, the needles turned brown, and the trunks were scorched almost to the top. 鈥淏ut pretty much all of the trees came back with a flush of green growth within months,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey basically just didn鈥檛 die.鈥澛�

Most conifers do not sprout back when traumatized, but redwoods have聽鈥渞emarkable sprouting ability,鈥� says Dr. Finney. Each tree is wrapped in a thick, insulating bark 鈥撀爏everal feet thick in old-growth groves such as in Big Basin. Beneath the bark lie buds that remain dormant until activated by some trauma 鈥� lightning, fire, or wind.聽The trees are also genetically built to resist rot, and are remarkably free from fatal enemies like fungus, defoliators, and bark beetles. And they grow extremely quickly.

鈥淭hese forests are going to come through so much better than any of the fires of the Sierra Nevada or other forest types,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f those forests sustained the type of fire you see in these places, they would be dead, or suffer severe mortality.鈥澛�

Big Basin park, in the Santa Cruz mountains where the CZU Lightning Complex Fire began Aug. 16 during a lightning storm, is closed for the foreseeable future.聽The historic park headquarters burned to the ground and other buildings were torched, write reporters for The San Jose Mercury News and Associated Press who have hiked the park since the fire. The ground is covered in ash and blackened undergrowth. Some of the giant trees have fallen, but most remain upright, though scorched. Among the trees still standing is the 鈥淢other of the Forest鈥� 鈥� which once reached 329 feet into the sky. After a storm it鈥檚 now 293 feet high.

By spring, explains Dr. Finney, all the dead foliage will have fallen to the ground, replacing the blackened surface with a carpet of brown dried-up needles and leaves. Small redwoods will have already sprung up at the base of the trees, and greenery will break out up and down the trunks 鈥� resembling bright-green pipe cleaners.

鈥淲ithin three or four years, the redwoods will look completely normal,鈥� he says. The canopy will be intact, and visitors should be able to tilt their heads back and look up, up, up to see patches of blue sky. The bark, though, will stay darkened for a long time and will take some getting used to. Eventually, even that will slough off, pushed out by the growing inner layer.聽Two common trees at the park, Douglas fir and tan oak, don鈥檛 survive fire well and are likely dead, according to the Sempervirens Fund.聽Meanwhile, the聽Fund聽has begun a restoration聽fundraising campaign聽to assist the state park service in making Big Basin accessible and to help plan for long-term recovery.

The future of the redwood forest lies in its past, says Dr. Finney. Until the mid-1800s, Indigenous people burned the forests to cultivate various resources, such as hunting and sprouting shrubs for basket weaving. The last big fire to tear through the Santa Cruz Mountains was in 1948.聽

鈥淚f we burn under mild and moderate conditions, just like the [American] Indians did, then the forest is protected against extreme fires.鈥�