Despite fire, Big Basin’s biggest trees to survive
Oldgrowth redwood forests that burned at Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz County face a healthy future if a similar fire event and recovery at Humboldt Redwoods is an indicator, say California’s top forest experts.
The 2003 Canoe Creek fire, similar in scope to that at Big Basin and also started by dry lightning, rampaged through nearly 14,000 acres of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The oldgrowth redwoods survived that event and have since thrived, with the forest floor cleared of brush and the forest canopy opened to more sunlight.
“While many hearts are breaking to hear of the fires at Big Basin and the Santa Cruz Mountains, as is mine, we can take some comfort knowing that very few redwoods are killed by wildfires,” said Michael Furniss, a worldrenowned hydrologist who spent a career in the Redwood Empire as a forest soil scientist.
“Within a few years, the average person who hasn’t been to Big Basin before won’t notice right away that there was a major fire,” said
John Harvey, a former arborist who is now the administrator of Big Tree Seekers, a 74,000member association dedicated to documentation and preservation of the world’s largest trees.
“It could take five years to look good, it could take 10 years, and within 15 years, it should look like Canoe Creek,” Harvey said.
At Humboldt Redwoods, an area that like Big Basin hadn’t burned for generations, the Canoe Creek fire tore through oldgrowth forests as a searing inferno.
“That fire burned everything that was on the ground,” Harvey said. “If there was a fallen tree, brush, branches accumulated, they burned. It burned through oldgrowth and secondgrowth redwoods, and burned for weeks. It was very similar to the fire in Big Basin, with areas (the firefighters) just couldn’t get to.”
The Canoe Creek fire burned through the Children’s Forest, a spectacular oldgrowth grove east of the South Fork Eel River near the Avenue of the Giants.
Harvey is one of many who have returned many times to the Children’s Forest to see the state of the recovery. The forest regained its pristine, cathedrallike look within 10 years, he said.
On a recent visit, Harvey put together a photo gallery in the onceburned areas of the Children’s Forest. In one photo, a burned park sign is partially covered by vegetation, but otherwise it is difficult to tell that a wildfire occurred.
“When you live thousands of years and are designed to survive fire, an event like this is just a blip in time for them,” said Richard Stenger, a former Yosemite Park ranger who is chief of Redwood Coast Parks.
“You see many fire scars on redwoods. They’re like tattoos.”
Redwoods develop bark that can be a foot thick and has builtin fire retardant that protects and insulates the trees’ cambium, Stenger said.
“They are designed for fires, and not just the trees, the entire ecosystem,” Stenger said. Redwoods can reproduce from both saplings and seeds, he noted, and after a fire, clearedout areas exposed to sunlight provide the nursery for redwoods to sprout.
Redwoods also can be resistant to death from crowning, where the fires are so hot they jump from treetop to treetop. When the tops of redwoods break off, such as from a windstorm, they sprout new tops as if starting anew, said Furniss, who has rope climbed some of the world’s tallest trees and sat in secondary trunks 250 feet up in the tree.
“Many old redwoods have multiple tops because the primary one blew off or was burned off,” he said.
Parks have two elements, Stenger noted: the nature element and the human element. At Big Basin, the historic ranger station, visitor center, museum and amphitheater all burned, he noted.
“Redwoods have a lot more resiliency,” he said.
“Redwoods arose about 120 million years ago,” Furniss said. “They are still here.”
“When thousands you of live years and are designed to survive fire, an event like this is just a blip in time for them.”
Richard Stenger, chief of Redwood Coast Parks