[APWG] Wildland fires, exotics and replanting natives

[Craig Dremann]

Dear All,

Wildland fires, exotics and replanting natives

While traveling to relatives for Thanksgiving, my wife Sue and I, took a
side trip to do a northern and southern California severe drought
survey, as we are entering a third year of drought, and looked at three
fire areas at the edge of Los Angeles,  NW of downtown.

The Oct. 13-15 Porter Ranch (Sesnon) fire, that shut down the 118
freeway and burned 14,700 acres, and you can see a photos linked on
Google images, like the one at
http://www.hubbuzz.com/images/cache/4d7d17be-7441-4b3c-a595-99d0015ba83f-1-Medium.png

My picture from Porter Ranch at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/burned_shrubs.jpg, is were the burning embers
were blow by the wind 1/4 mile from the fire, through the wrought-iron
fence surrounding the parking lot for the city park, and the embers got
lodged in the irrigated planted shrubs, and set the shrubs on fire.

And the Sylmar (Sayre Wildland) fire on November 15, burning 11,262
acres in Los Angeles county, that you can see at
http://laist.com/attachments/lindsayrebecca/SayreFireGrowing.jpg

Our Sylmar picture is at http://www.ecoseeds.com/burned_hillside.JPG

And the Santa Clarita (Church blaze) June 2005 fire,
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2277/1694122794_ce7b9543ba.jpg that was
not replanted with any local native perennial bunchgrasses, and over the
last three years, solid exotics have regrown.

In all of these areas, a perennial native bunchgrass understory should
be sprouting up immediately after each of these fires, but since the
native bunch grasses were grazed out over 100 years ago, the wildlands
ecosystems are now extremely vulnerable to future fires.

Once a fire goes through the native shrublands, it opens up empty spaces
for the extremely flammable annual European exotics to grow solidly,
like what we saw on the west side of I-5 behind the 76 station in Santa
Clarita.  The hillside burned in June 2005, and what a local told me,
nothing was planted, and nothing grew on the burned slopes for two
years.

Then this spring, the 2005 burned slope became completely solidly
infested with exotic mustards.  My picture is at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/burned_hillside.jpg and a close-up at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/weeds_on_burned_hills.jpg

In the arid West, if we do not invest the money necessary for replant
the missing perennial local native bunchgrasses, especially after
wildland fires in California, the SW and the Great Basin, then by our
negligence, we are allowing the exotics to move in and create even
bigger and more severe wildfires in the future.

Any professional ecologist can go to where the western wildlands fires
have occurred in the last decade, and see this conversion wherever the
native bunchgrasses are missing from the local ecosystems, and see where
the flammable annual exotics are gaining ground.

The difference in flammability between the bunchgrasses and some of the
exotics, is that most native bunchgrasses only have the amount of
flammable biomass per acre, as a single sheet of paper spread over the
land, whereas the exotics are like putting out 500-1,000 gallons of
gasoline per acre, that you can see at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/flames.html

All of our public land managers in the arid West, should start asking
Congress for adequate annual funds, to sowing  local perennial native
bunchgrasses after every fire, to keep the flammable annual exotics from
moving in.   We need a massive wildlands fire ecosystem restoration
bailout.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, CA (650) 325-7333