It will take '10 to 20 years' before Santa Monica Mountains look like they did before Woolsey fire
Louis Sahagan 11/18/18
Two dozen biologists with binoculars
and telemetry equipment fanned out
across the smoldering gulches and
slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains
National Recreation Area on Friday
to take a preliminary accounting of
the damage caused by wildfire to
prime mountain lion country.
It was arduous, dusty work, traipsing
through shrub lands reduced to piles
of white ash and denuded canyons.
But the data they gathered were cause
for cautious optimism.
A deer lies where it fell, trying to outrun flames
from the Woolsey fire, in the Solstice Creek
bed below Corral Canyon Park in Malibu.
(Reed Saxon / AP)
Of 13 mountain lions with radio collars they had
been tracking before the Woolsey fire broke out,
scientists confirmed that 12 were alive and
moving outside of the burned areas in the
vicinity of Point Mugu to the west, and from
Malibu east to the 405 Freeway, scientists said.
One lion, a sub-adult known as P-74, remained
unaccounted for.
Though Southern California’s urban mountain
lions have become a fixture in popular
imagination, they are an imperiled breed
living at the very limit of what is ecologically
possible. Now biologists are watching, unsure
of what’s next in the area where many of the
creature comforts that the large predators
need to breed, hide and hunt deer were lost
after the Woolsey fire roared through.
The 96,949 acres burned during the Woolsey Fire,
11/8-11/11/17/18
“The national recreation area has become
an immense natural experiment,” Seth
Riley, a National Park Service ecologist,
said. “The big question now is this: What
happens when a huge wildlife refuge
hemmed by freeways and development
abruptly loses more than half of its
habitat to wildfire?”
The 96,949 acres burned during the Woolsey Fire,
11/8-11/11/17/18
“The national recreation area has become
an immense natural experiment,” Seth
Riley, a National Park Service ecologist,
said. “The big question now is this: What
happens when a huge wildlife refuge
hemmed by freeways and development
abruptly loses more than half of its
habitat to wildfire?”
For miles and miles in the Santa Monica
Mountains, from ridgeline to ridgeline in
all directions, the Woolsey fire exacted a
heavy toll, burning 100,000 acres — 88%
of the area’s federal parkland.
It is a huge loss for an unlikely wilderness
that has persisted for decades through
dogged conservation despite surrounding
urban sprawl.
Burnt up Liberty Canyon
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Public access to the range was hard
fought by a bipartisan coalition of
conservation and civic groups starting
in the 1960s. Their goal: a unique
combination of city, county, state
and federal land, together with
beaches, trails and scenic corridors
that would run from Griffith Park to
Point Mugu in Ventura County.
In 1978, Congress awarded their
efforts by authorizing the Santa
Monica Mountains National
Recreation Area to provide
open space in one of the nation’s
most congested, polluted and
park-poor regions.
Over the past 40 years, its trails
have become a destination for
hikers, mountain bikers,
bird-watchers and equestrians,
its roads a fixture for car
commercials and motorcycle
clubs and its creeks a draw for
busloads of schoolchildren from
throughout the region.
Today, the chaparral highlands
and sandstone peaks offer
panoramic views of stubble and
ash. Entry is restricted to people
credentialed to work in fire zones.
The fire burned the life out of
hiking trails some say rank with
such iconic paths as the John Muir
Trail in the Sierra Nevada range
and the Appalachian Trail in the
East. Completed in 2016 after a
half-century of hard work and
altruism, the Backbone stretches
through 67 miles of sycamores,
chaparral and sandstone peaks
between Point Mugu State Park
and Will Rogers State Historic
Park. Officials said segments of
the Backbone trail within the
Woolsey fire’s footprint remain
closed.
Emily Pruitt, a spokeswoman for
the National Park Service, said it
is too early to know when burned
sections of the recreation area will reopen.
“The fire destroyed at least 616
structures within the park,” she
said, “and there are still a lot of
potential hazards to be assessed.”
Properties with links to show
business were destroyed. Among
them were Paramount Ranch and
sets used for HBO’s hit series
“Westworld” — both popular
destination points for day trippers
who used the background for
family photos and Instagram posts.
Canyon Park
recreation area stands amid a landscape
charred by
the Woolsey fire in Malibu.
(Reed Saxon / AP)
“Most ecologists say it will take
10 to 20 years for the Santa
Monica Mountains to look the
way they did before the Woolsey
fire came through,” said Mark
Mendelsohn, a National Park
Service biologist. “Of course,
that depends on rainfall and
drought.”
When it comes to native species,
he said, “this fire means they are
going to struggle, some more than
others.”
One of the largest mountain lion
populations in Southern California
is confined within 275 square miles
in an around the Santa Monica
Mountains National Recreation Area,
which is bordered by the Pacific
Ocean, major freeways, housing
and commercial developments and
agricultural fields.
Studies begun in 2002 suggest the
pre-fire landscape may have reached
capacity with about 15 to 20
mountain lions. Inbreeding is a
serious problem among these big
cats, which have extremely low
genetic diversity. The males will
fight and kill others for territory,
which is vastly more limited after
the Woolsey fire.
A charred sign just west of Liberty
Canyon Road and a stone’s throw
from the 101 Freeway in Agoura
Hills still stands in a critical
wildlife corridor where
conservationists hope to build a
wildlife bridge. It would allow
safe passage and help diversify
the gene pool among the groups
of mountain lions remaining in
the Santa Monicas south of the
freeway as well as in the Simi
Hills and Santa Susana
mountains to the north.
Now, the site of what aims to
be one of the most ambitious
predator restoration projects
in the United States is
surrounded by miles of charred
hills and mountains.
Whenever conditions change,
there will be winners and losers.
Mendelsohn has witnessed
plenty of heartbreaking
evidence of both during recent
surveys of the still-smoldering
landscape.
“Some animals didn’t make it,”
he said. “But it was encouraging
to see a deer in a completely
charred forest, a tiny wren tit
hunkering down in one of the
few shrubs left standing, and
a woodrat leap out from under
a rock near where its nest had
burned.”
It didn’t take long for Mendelsohn
to find the natural sounds he was
searching for as he strode along
a creek edged with singed reeds
and brush in the Upper Las
Virgenes Canyon Open Space
Preserve area of Agoura Hills.
It was home to an isolated
population of federally
threatened red-legged frogs
discovered in 1998, and a
place where biologists gather
eggs used in reintroduction
programs elsewhere in the
recreation area.
male mountain lion who lives in
the area burned by the Woolsey
fire, has not transmitted data in
days. (National Park Service)
“Five plopping sounds in the
water gave me a sense of
cautious relief,” he said.
Federal biologists are discussing
proposals to capture the frog
population, if necessary, in t
he event a large storm threatens
to bury one of the species’ last
outposts in Los Angeles and
Ventura counties in mud and
debris.
There was good news in Topanga
Canyon, where firefighters
avoided dropping retardant
that would have decimated a
Malibu Creek habitat that’s
home to frogs, newts and
protected fish such as
Arroyo chubs and federally
endangered southern steelhead trout.
“Topanga Canyon was spared,”
biologist Rosi Dagit said. “I
recently stood on a roadside
pullout overlooking the stream
and shouted, ‘Thank god,
you didn’t burn!’ ”
For now, and in the years
ahead, biologists will focus
attention on how the mobile,
efficient predators at the top
of the area’s food chain are
faring, and their impacts on
recovering plant and animal
populations.
The surprise is that nearly
all of the mountain lions
with radio collars turned
up outside of the fire’s
burn
area.
“It is not clear whether
one or more of those
mountain lions outran
the fire to safer conditions,
or just happened to be
there by some amazing
coincidence when the
fire broke out,” said Riley,
the National Park Service
ecologist.
Questions remain
about how these
big cats — already
living closer to their
peers than they are
predisposed to —
will endure in even
tighter confines.
There may be
repercussions, and
not just for the
mountain lion
population. “People
really need to protect
their animals,” Riley
said, “now that there
are fewer deer on the
landscape.”
Excellents Reads, I am a big fan of Wolf stories and articles.... always finding something new about wolfs
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