20 years later, Mcnally Fire reforestation still continues
It was 20 years ago in the summer of 2002 the Mcnally Fire ripped through a large swath of the two-year-old Giant Sequoia National Monument and other areas of Sequoia and Inyo National Forests.
The 150,700-acre human-caused wildfire started on July 21, 2002, about 17 miles north of Kernville near Roads End, just north of the Tulare-kern County line. The Mcnally remains among the largest fires in the history of Sequoia National Forest — although other fires in recent years have burned greater acreage cumulatively. It was the largest wildfire in California that year but its been eclipsed in recent years and it no longer makes the list of the state’s top 20 wildfires by size.
The fire burned for 37 days before it was contained on Aug. 29, 2002. For a time in the early days of the wildfire the Packsaddle Grove of Giant Sequoias was threatened but otherwise the fire burned in areas outside the groves. Reforestation project In addition to the estimated $53 million expense of fighting the Mcnally Fire, emergency watershed restoration cost more than $3 million after a heavy storm dropped more than 20 inches of rain in early November that year, as measured within 48 hours at Johnsondale. The expense has continued and the Forest Service recently announced plans for more related restoration.
In a news release on Oct. 20, Alicia Embry, Sequoia National Forest spokesperson, said the proposed Mcnally Reforestation Project encompasses 700 acres in the Kern River Ranger District.
Ecosystem Staff Officer Gretchen Fitzgerald said the project is a partnership with American Forests and CAL FIRE.
“The proposed action is needed to restore forested conditions and habitat in the old burned area,” Fitzgerald said. “Controlling shrubs through mastication, manual removal, and reforestation would help to re-establish appropriate forest conditions that provide wildlife habitat and improve habitat connectivity.”
Embry said the project’s objective is to plant approximately 700 acres within the burned footprint, improve forest resilience to natural disturbances and improve wildlife habitat. If approved, site preparation is expected to begin during the summer of 2023, followed by planting in the spring of 2024.
American Forests, a nonprofit organization that began as the American Forestry Association
in 1875, is also working with Sequoia National Forest on a restoration project in the area of the 2015 Rough Fire in Giant Sequoia National Monument near Dunlap. The organization has also done work for CAL FIRE at Mountain Home State Forest.
The planned project isn’t the first attempt at post-mcnally fire reforestation. A reforestation project announced in June 2007 called for planting 28,000 Jeffrey pine and white fir seedlings to help prevent soil erosion and improve the watershed while restoring critical wildlife habitat. And American Forests planted 132,000 conifer seedlings in the Mcnally burn area in 2009.
Still, in 2010, a regional silviculturist for the Forest Service listed the Mcnally fire as one of the top two California wildfires of the decade in terms of acreage. He noted the potential need to plant 24,600 acres of forestland in the burn area.
In a 2012 news release recognizing the 10-year mark after the fire, the agency reported planting more than 400,000 tree seedlings in the burn area, partly with volunteer support, including $30,800 from the Penny Pines Foundation. Seedlings included white fir, western white pine, sugar pine and Jeffrey pine trees.
Not all of the reforestation efforts have been successful.
As reported by The Californian in 2012, only about 5,000 acres of the burn area were replanted in the first decade after Mcnally. The Forest Service saw 95 percent survival in some areas, but in others, it was less. Drought, gopher disturbance and even the angle at which the tree was planted can affect the odds of survival.
And if the seedlings survive, foresters have estimated it could take more than a century for the area to resemble the forest before the fire.
GIANT SEQUOIAS
A number of other wildfires have burned in the area of the Mcnally and the Forest Service said heavy dead and down timber from the 2002 fire was fuel for the 2019 Schaeffer fire.
The 2021 fire season was especially devastating to Giant Sequoias, with more than 6,000 acres of the groves burned in two fires — the KNP Complex and Windy Fires. The loss of up to 20 percent of ancient trees since 2015 has drawn attention throughout the world and resulted in an emergency action announced by Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in July.
Of the 37 groves on land managed by the Forest Service, all but five have burned in recent fires, the agency said.
Manual and mechanical treatments in Giant Sequoia National Monument and in the Nelder Grove on Sierra National Forest, began during the summer and are expected to include prescribed burning when conditions allow.
CRITICISM
Ara Marderosian of the Weldon-based Sequoia Forestkeeper organization has been critical of other Forest Service post-mcnally projects and the Giant Sequoia emergency response.
In an email on Oct. 22, he called the proposed reforestation effort “another bad general forest land project.”
He said he’s concerned “creating openings by removing any shade, whether provided by dead (or live) trees or shrubs, will not provide the shade conditions needed” for tree seedlings.
There was no mention of logging in the Forest Service news release, and a map of the project area was not immediately available.
But Marderosian expressed concern the burned areas in question may have been previously logged and the Forest Service intends to create a tree plantation.
He cited the work of Chad Hanson — another frequent critic of Sequoia National Forest who’s the director and principal ecologist for the John Muir Project. He said Hanson has been doing fieldwork in large high-severity fire patches for two decades, and the only place where he sometimes reports type conversion to chaparral is where post-fire logging/planting has occurred.
“Otherwise, natural regeneration of native vegetation — conifers, oaks, shrubs — is abundant,” Marderosian said, adding he could “accept only planting trees or shrubs in the shade of ‘buddy rocks’ where ground moisture levels are more conducive to restoration.”
Claudia Elliott is a freelance writer based in Tehachapi and a former editor of The Recorder. She can be reached at claudia@ claudiaelliott.net.