The closures keep coming in Los Padres National Forest, where an increasing number of dead and dying trees poses safety hazards to visitors. The Santa Lucia Ranger District announced on Aug. 14 the closure of certain sites in the Figueroa Mountain Recreation Area
In June, the district closed the Rockfront Off-Highway Vehicle area, also due to tree hazards. The area reopened on July 1, after Forest Service wildland firefighters were able to remove dangerous trees from the site. Now, Figueroa Mountain will undergo a similar process.
Forest Service Public Affairs Officer Andrew Madsen told the Sun in a June interview that dead standing trees threaten sudden collapse on campgrounds or across trails, because they are unstable in windy weather.
“In the interest of safety, in some of those areas where we have a higher concentration of dead standing trees, we’re going ahead and closing them until we can send out crews of sawyers to saw them to take them down so they don’t suddenly fall on a visitor,” Madsen said.
Dead and dying trees also pose a risk to fire responders in the case of wildfire, because they would likely be the first to fall.
According to a news release from forest officials, Los Padres has suffered the deaths of approximately 60 million trees since 2010. The drought is the main culprit, according to Madsen, along with rising temperatures and bark beetle infestations.
Bark beetles are nothing new to the forest—they typically contribute to a healthy forest ecosystem. But because the drought has left Los Padres’ trees so fragile, they are unable to withstand the beetle infestations.
Closures in the Figueroa Mountain Recreation Area include: Figueroa Lookout, Pino Alto, Cumbre Day Use Area, and Forest Roads 8N16 and 8N32. The closures are temporary, but the exact timeline depends on the availability of Forest Service personnel from other wildland fire operations, according to the news release.
This article appears in Aug 18-25, 2016.