Now, an innovative plan to rehabilitate the forests scarred by those fires projects a potentially dismal climate situation in the decades ahead: erratic rainfall and less snow, drought-stressed trees, and hotter, longer dry seasons more hospitable to insects than vegetation.
And it asks, what if the decimated forests surrounding the county’s seven ridge communities could be restored as buffers in the hotter, drier, more fire-prone climate?
The Camp Fire Restoration Plan steps away from the long-held practice of replanting what was there before and instead calls for bringing in tree species better adapted to warmer, drier conditions.
“Replanting the way that it was done even 10 years ago, which isn’t very long ago, isn’t working,” said Wolfy Rougle, Butte County Resource Conservation District's forest health watershed coordinator and an adviser on the project. “Just because we don’t know everything about what 2035 will be like doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to set us up for success.”
Written by national conservation nonprofit American Forests, the project zeroes in on just over 4,000 fire-scarred acres overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management. But it was designed as a blueprint for land managers reconsidering what types of ecosystems might withstand a hotter and drier reality with more fires in California’s mountainous regions.
Central to the project are predictions that the climate at 2,500 feet of elevation will transform by the middle of the century to become more like current conditions 1,000 feet downhill.
Pulling from a variety of scientific studies, the project foresees a future where towering conifer stands have retreated to higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada. It anticipates a receding snow line and a thirstier atmosphere leaving less moisture in the ground.
Areas once thought of as intractably dense forest would be replanted with a patchwork of oak woodlands, conifers and native bunch grasses. In other words, more diversity and fewer “pines in lines,” as the old forestry saying describes the way forests have long been restored.
The plan calls for collecting seeds and acorns from warmer climates in lower elevations for the assisted migration of certain species. The idea is to speed up what changing climate conditions are expected to do anyway.
Coreen Francis, the Bureau of Land Management’s lead forester for California and Nevada, said the increasing severity of fires in Butte County and other foothill areas motivated her to ask American Forests to collect input from leading research on climate change and ideas from local experts and residents on how the area might recover.
“With the Camp Fire in particular, I just thought about all the residents who lost their homes (situated) right on the border with BLM land,” Francis said. “I wanted to be able to show them we cared. We wanted to respond in a scientific manner so the forest recovered appropriately.”
Brittany Dyer, American Forests’ California state director, described a shift among some reforestation experts away from marketable timber to hardy oak woodland-dominated forests expected to fare better in a changing climate. The plan would require consistent stewardship of the land to reduce overgrowth on the forest floor and help rebuild towering forests to replace the devastating loss of old growth trees in recent fires.
Using the Climate Adapted Seed Finder tool developed by researchers at the University of California at Davis, communities at 2,000 feet elevation in Butte County should harvest acorns and seeds from the Central Valley town of Shasta Lake.
The plan scores tree species on their likelihood of survival in changing conditions. All tree species are expected to be stressed by the changing climate, but oaks are generally expected to fare better because they are more adapted to drought and fire.
The projects outlines terrain-based plans for species based on the topography. For example, a mixture of ponderosa and gray pine with a variety of oak species is better suited to withstand the heat of south-facing slopes. Cooler northern slopes could be more hospitable to incense cedar and Douglas fir in a mixed oak forest.
After major wildfires, federal recovery projects focus on rebuilding roads, culverts, trails, visitors centers and other cultural features, Francis said. Reforestation is often left to local land managers and not included in the infusion of funding that comes after a wildfire emergency.
“Most of the time we do just a little reforestation planning with the local forester picking out trees already part of that normal seed zone and elevation,” Francis said.
But Francis said a history of regular large fires in Butte County called for a different approach. The work is expected to cost between $500,000 and $1.5 million between 2020 and 2025 and focus on three parcels near Paradise and Magalia — Upper Ridge, Dean Road and Jordan Hill.
Francis said the federal agency doesn’t have the money or staff to do it all. She is seeking help from nonprofits like American Forests, local agencies and other groups to support the work. Workers and volunteers already planted a first batch of seedlings at Upper Ridge and Jordan Hill in 2021 and 2020.
The challenge is ensuring the work goes beyond planting trees and walking away, but instead funds programs to plant, cut, burn, prune and manage the lands so the forests don’t cede completely to shrubs or return to overcrowded tinderboxes, Francis said.
She is already planning to use the report’s recommendations for assisted migration of species in other areas, including the eastern Sierra Nevada area burned by this year’s Tamarack Fire.
Longtime Butte County resident Brenda Rightmyer, a founding member of the Yankee Hill Fire Safe Council, said the 2018 Camp Fire burned in areas where there were tons of dead trees on the ground that were never removed after a 2008 wildfire, known locally as the first Camp Fire. She believes that fire fueled the Camp Fire’s monstrous growth and is hopeful that projects like the BLM effort will do a better job removing dead trees and taking other steps to protect communities against the next fire.
Rightmyer said she’s seen fires transform landscapes from forests to highly flammable shrub lands because of repeat fires during her 30 years in the area. Reforestation plans “are very important,” she said.
“We need to get more aggressive into doing the work and get more people doing the work — the list is endless,” she said.
Julie Johnson and Yoohyun Jung are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: julie.johnson@sfchronicle.com, yoohyun.jung@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @juliejohnson @yoohyun_jung
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