Redwoods can survive Calif. wildfires

As historic wildfires rage in Northern California, scorching brush and buildings in their paths, one giant is still standing tall: the redwoods.

Onlookers feared the ancient oldgrowth redwoods, some as old as 2,000 years, had succumbed to the flames of the CZU Lightning Complex when it torched through Big Basin Redwoods State Park last week.

But photos and reports from inside the park show that while buildings and campground infrastructure are gone, the redwoods remain.

“That is such good news, I can’t tell you how much that gives me peace of mind,” Laura McLendon, conservation director for the Sempervirens Fund, a group dedicated to the protection of redwoods and their habitats, told the Associated Press.

In fact, scientists say this seemingly amazing feat – surviving as a wildfire, ignited by a string of lightning strikes, that is burning some 78,000 acres around Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties – is expected.

“These trees are amazing,” Mark Finney, a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service in Montana who studied the redwoods as a graduate student at UC Berkeley told the San Jose Mercury News. “Redwoods are an ancient lineage. There are fossils of them from tens of millions of years ago. It’s not the same kind of creature as our other trees. They have lived through a lot.”

Redwood forests are meant to survive fires, and individual trees likely have survived far worse flames, McLendon said.

Redwoods have thick bark that can survive intense blazes, Finney told the Mercury News. Tannin in the trees’ bark and heartwood act as a flame retardant, the Sempervirens Fund says.

Trees that don’t fall can sprout new buds from cells that have been dormant for years, Finney added.