Redwoods survive wildfire at California’s oldest state park

The AP reporter, Martha Mendoza, won two Pulitzer Prizes as part of a team, and was also one of my instructors in graduate school five years ago. She’s survived much more dangerous assignments than hiking through a burned-over forest.

Redwoods are tough. Almost all the big ones have fire scars, and many still thrive after the center was hollowed out by flames. But we’ve so drastically altered the forests and climate that many feared that they wouldn’t survive.

Good news indeed.

— Rex

Not surprisingly many human made structures in the park are gone – destroyed by the blazes.

The forest and the trees will be fine, eventually – this entire region has been shaped by fires over its entire history. In fact much of this ecosystem is renewed by fires. The linked article does a good job covering these aspects.

The hardest part is dealing with the human lives affected; in fact we’ve seen the loss experienced by one of our own BPL community.

Very, very good news. Global warming introduces some uncertainty into the survival of Redwoods. Glad that this wonderful forest is still around.

I grew up just down the hill from Big Basin.   Lots of great memories camping there as a kid in the 60’s.  Spent lots of time bouldering not far from there at Castle Rock in the 70’s.   Good memories …