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After a devastating conflagration, trees regrow using energy stored long ago ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When lightning ignited fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the blaze spread quickly. Redwoods naturally resist burning, but this time flames shot through the canopies of 100-meter-tall trees, incinerating the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.” Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The charred survivors,...

After more than a decade of restoration and preparation, stalled by the effects of the CZU Lightning Complex wildfire, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, in collaboration with its partners, will soon open a new, multiuse trail system in the San Vicente Redwoods. “We’re going to have trails for hikers and mountain bikers and dog walkers and equestrians,” said Sarah Newkirk. “All of this is embedded in a property that also has threatened endangered species, a commercial timber harvest and community based fire risk reduction activities.” The 7.3 mile trail system, which opens to the public Dec 3, will...

Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz County is partially reopening later this month—with reservations accepted starting Friday for limited day-use access—for the first time since the CZU Lightning Complex Fire destroyed much of the park in August 2020. The fire burned more than 97 percent of the park, destroying its headquarters, campgrounds, employee housing and nearly every other structure, and the park is still without electricity, running water or phone service, California State Parks officials said. Big Basin will partially reopen starting July 22 to allow visitors to explore the Redwood Loop and about 18 miles of fire...

LACERVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A father and son charged with starting a massive California wildfire that destroyed many homes and forced tens of thousands of people to flee Lake Tahoe communities earlier this year pleaded not guilty in court Friday. The El Dorado County prosecutor's office charged David Scott Smith, 66, and Travis Shane Smith, 32, with reckless arson. The office also charged the son with illegal conversion or manufacture of a machine gun and both men of illegal possession of a firearm silencer. ...The criminal complaints do not specify how the machine gun and silencer tie into the Caldor...

Hundreds of firefighters were battling to protect several groves of giant sequoias in California, warning the enormous ancient trees were at risk from out-of-control blazes. A number of separate fires were converging on the California woodland that is home to the huge trees, highlighting the terrifying power of wildfires to consume everything in their path.... ...Further north, the KNP Complex fire continued to threaten the renowned Giant Forest, home to General Sherman, the world's biggest tree by volume, and standing at 275 feet. General Sherman, which is estimated by the National Parks Service to be 2,200 years old, was wrapped...

When a massive wildfire swept through California’s oldest state park last week it was feared many trees in a grove of old-growth redwoods, some of them 2,000 years old and among the tallest living things on Earth, may finally have succumbed. But an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Monday and confirmed most of the ancient redwoods had withstood the blaze. Among the survivors is one dubbed Mother of the Forest. SNIP “But the forest is not gone,” McLendon said. “It will regrow. Every old growth redwood I’ve ever...

There is finally some good news from environmental scientists studying climate change: as the earth gets warmer, ancient redwood trees are thriving. The huge trees that dot the California coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains soak up carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, keeping the potentially harmful greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. Despite the warming climate, redwood trees are growing faster than at anytime over the last century, according to a report issued today by the Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative.

"Star Wars" conventions are usually held in major cities, but from now on, devoted fans may want to gather smack dab in the middle of a forest -- at Redwood National Park, to be precise. Several weeks ago, the national park, located just north of Eureka, Calif., opened its first new hiking trail in 10 years, and it appears the Force is strong with the brand-new path. Redwood enthusiast Richard Stenger, of the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau, told AOL News that a major surprise awaits imaginative visitors on the trail: a giant redwood tree that resembles Darth Vader's...

National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols is one of the world's foremost wildlife photographers. But he recently said that he'd happily spend the rest of his life photographing trees. Of course, the folks over at National Geographic would almost certainly never hear of it. Nichols' newfound love developed after a serious, yearlong relationship with redwoods. National Geographic sent Nichols to spend an entire year in California's redwood forest. His mission was to capture the majesty of some of the tallest trees on Earth, some of which date back before Christ. And if you've ever photographed in a forest, you'll understand the...

It could only happen in California. All the parties in the dispute are as green as nori. (It's made from seaweed. You eat it.) Richard Treanor and his wife, Carolyn Bissett, live in Sunnyvale, Calif. And Mr. Treanor and Ms. Bissett care so much about the environment that they drive a hybrid Toyota Prius. Not to be outdone, their neighbor, Mark Vargas, cares so much about the environment that he recently bought a plug-in electric car. Mr. Treanor and Ms. Bissett topped that. They planted eight redwoods in their yard, preening that the trees -- which can grow to giant...

Sunnyvale, Calif. (AP) -- In an environmental dispute seemingly scripted for eco-friendly California, a man asked prosecutors to file charges against his neighbors because their towering redwoods blocked sunlight to his backyard solar panels. But the couple next door insisted they should not have to chop down the trees to accommodate Mark Vargas' energy demands because they planted the redwoods before he installed the solar panels in 2001. Experts say such clashes could become more common as California promotes renewable energy and solar systems become more popular. "Five or ten years ago, you wouldn't have seen this case because there...

Talk about a clash of cherished green values. In a case with statewide significance, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office is pursuing a Sunnyvale couple under a little-known California law because redwood trees in their backyard cast a shadow over their neighbor's solar panels. Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett own a Prius and consider themselves environmentalists. But they refuse to cut down any of the trees behind their house on Benton Street, saying they've done nothing wrong. "We're just living here in peace. We want to be left alone," said Bissett, who with her husband has spent $25,000 defending...

ARCATA, Calif. — Jason Wilson was just 21 when a Lakota elder gave him a spirit name. Wilson, she said, was destined to carry a heavy weight. He would need the medicine of the name she offered, she told him, "to carry that weight in a good way, a strong way and as far as it needs to be carried." Three years later, on a September day in 1998, the bearded redhead from Missouri lay in a fetal curl on the floor of a Humboldt County forest, rocking and sobbing in the duff. Next to him was 24-year-old David Nathan...

<p>BERKELEY -- To some, she was an environmental Joan of Arc, patron saint of the Save the Redwoods movement and tree-sitting bane of the Northern California timber industry.</p> <p>To Berkeley writer Kate Coleman, she was a fascinating cross between nuclear whistle-blower Karen Silkwood and the late anarchist Emma Goldman.</p> <p>Environmental activist Judi Bari died of breast cancer six years ago in a Mendocino County cabin. She was 47.</p>

Timber Company Accused of Fraud in Deal to Save Redwoods By DEAN E. MURPHY AN FRANCISCO, Feb. 25 — A deal struck four years ago to save about 10,000 acres of giant redwoods in Humboldt County in Northern California was supposed to end the bitter feuding over logging there. In exchange for $480 million from the federal and state governments, the Pacific Lumber Company agreed to turn the world's largest privately owned grove of ancient redwoods into a public reserve. The company also consented to a series of regulations on logging operations on its remaining 211,000 acres, including some additional...

<p>SACRAMENTO - California has acquired 25,000 acres along its far northwest coast that will be joined with other public lands to form the largest contiguous redwood forest to be safeguarded in the state.</p> <p>The Mill Creek watershed, purchased for $60 million, will link the redwood groves of the Jedediah Smith and Del Norte Coast Redwood state parks and connect inland and coastal habitats. It also borders on parts of the Smith River National Recreation area and Redwood National Park, more than 6 million acres of protected public land in all.</p>