Riprap clatters and clangs against U.S. Forest Service Battalion Chief Chip Laugharn’s government-issued pickup truck. The sun beams down and blankets the landscape with washed-out midday light. The air is rich with the smell of pine and woodsmoke.
“It’s a killer view,” Laugharn says, pointing to the wall of mountains dominating the horizon. “This is looking right into our backcountry.” He shifts his hands behind the wheel, stretches, and inhales deeply. “I love that smell,” he says.
The burn began hours ago, and will continue for several more. It is here on Figueroa Mountain, some 5,000 feet or so above the Santa Ynez Valley, that the U.S. Forest Service is conducting its final controlled burn of the winter.
One last window before the true fire season begins.
It was a brutal winter: with the Thomas Fire chewing up hundreds of thousands of acres, searing its name permanently onto California’s history pages as the largest and one of the most devastating conflagrations on record. Such out-of-control blazes are part of the reason why Los Padres National Forest crews are out today, March 28, clearing brush, felling hazardous trees, and conducting what it calls “prescribed” burns.
Los Padres has treated roughly 2,500 acres with the controlled firing method so far this year, with a tentative goal of 3,000. Crews focus on felling trees and clearing brush that could directly impact roads, trails, power lines, and campsites. Just a few years ago, more than 300 hazardous trees were removed or cleared from Figueroa’s campsite nearby.
“We try to give the sites a tree-and-a-half length away from hazards,” Laugharn explains, before adding that some stumps and “snag,” or solo dead trees, are left behind as habitat for cavity dwelling animals like woodpeckers.
Forest Service Public Information Officer Andrew Madsen told the Sun that the target acreage changed depending on available funding, staff resources, and current weather conditions. So while today’s work may be the last big project of the season, late rains could keep the burning window cracked open a little longer.
“We are optimistic we can meet that target as we have additional time and project work planned on the Mt. Pinos and Monterey Ranger Districts this week,” Madsen said on March 29.
The truck rolls to a stop at a small clearing at the top of the mountain.
Several pines, long dead, lie on their sides just near the road. More dead and dying are scattered throughout the area, some standing as straight as they did while alive, others with roots just barely clinging to earth.
Most of the trees are victims of drought and the accompanying bark beetles that came after them. With limited moisture from scant rainfall over the past decade, and thus no source for the trees to defend themselves by making sticky, repellent sap, the bug moved in like a plague, its larvae feasting on the precious inner cambium layer upon hatching, effectively killing the tree from the inside.
“It’s the life-sustaining part of tree,” Fire Prevention Officer Matt Guzman tells the Sun amid the smoke. “It would be like the blood of the tree basically.”
About 10 years ago, Forest Service crews cleared this area to help make more room for the native Coulter pines and newer ponderosa pines. But the decade was hard on the majority of the trees—rising temperatures coupled with the beetle’s devastation have taken a toll on the conifers and similar pine populations.
Forest Service scientists say it is even possible the whole mountain will eventually be covered in oak groves as opposed to the native flora due to warmer local and global climates.
“Other species aren’t thriving at the elevation like they were before,” Guzman says. “Nobody knows for sure, but we’ve been told that this range will turn into oak woodland. I tell people there’s a neat thing going on up here: You get to see a stand replacement. You’re seeing new growth come in and the old go out. It’s just too bad it’s not the species that were [historically] up here. Everything’s changing.”
Tom Plymale has been with the Forest Service for nearly 33 years and spent the majority of that time in the Los Padres. He’s seen many of those changes first hand.
“There’s more oaks now than what I remember,” he tells the Sun, “because I’ve seen pictures of this place from the ’30s and it’s predominantly open ponderosa [pines].”
The dominant tree over the past few hundred years on the mountain was the Coulter pine, which can be found in the mountains from California’s Central Coast all the way down through Baja Mexico, but only a few stands of those trees remain on Figueroa.
“To watch the forest go through this—because I’ve watched it burn and I’ve watched it grow back—it’s a shame,” Plymale says. “It breaks my heart to see the big trees going like this, but I see that we have done some good up here.”
The soon-to-be-retired crew superintendent points to several restored groves of ponderosa from the last time crews conducted a prescribed burn and tree clearing project.
“That’s my little success story,” Plymale says. “Here we are 20-something years later, and we are thinning an old generation out and watching the new generation come up.
“That’s my little ray of hope in all this stuff,” he adds.
Staff Writer Spencer Cole can be reached at scole@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 5-12, 2018.