map by Ben Pease at PeasePress.com

California is full of redwood forests that have been changed by people with varied motivations. For thousands
of years, Indigenous tribes harvested plants and lit fires to thin the greenery in the understory of the mostly fire-resilient redwoods, gently coaxing the forests to meet their needs for food, medicine, and shelter. With European settlement and the forced removal of Indigenous people came clear-cut logging, first with handsaws and horses and later with powerful chain saws and destructive earthmovers. The settlers also took the view that all wildfires should be extinguished, largely to protect their lumber^{see footnote number 2}.

Clear-cutting arrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 19th century, accelerating in the 20th century as the population of Northern California grew, creating demand for lumber as fuel, railroad track, and building material, especially as San Francisco rebuilt itself following the 1906 earthquake. By the 1920s, most of the biggest redwood trees were gone from these mountains, leaving behind armies of stumps. Regardless, a handful of lumber companies eked out a business cutting the region’s smaller trees, as well as managing redwoods with the intent to log them. At the time, people had been so successful at dousing wildfire that the last major one to burn the Santa Cruz Mountains was in 1884^{see footnote number 3}.

Sempervirens Fund purchased one of these heavily altered properties, called Redtree 236, in 2010. The redwoods were crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, on dirt eerily devoid of branches or fallen trunks. The forest “looked kind of artificial,” recalls Holderman. The former owners were “basically growing the trees like crops.” The land trust brought in consulting ecologists, soil experts, and foresters, including Nadia Hamey, to determine whether such a forest could be restored to a thriving ecosystem that supports thousands of other species. “We basically decided to try to figure out, how do you transition an industrial forest into an oldgrowth redwood forest?” Holderman says.

He was unsurprised by the consultants’ prescribed doses of selective logging as part of that solution. And he supported it. Many of his colleagues did not feel similarly. “I got a lot of blowback,” he remembers, bursting into deep guffaws. “Maybe a quarter of my board wanted to fire me.” The controversy was rooted in their belief that environmental stewardship meant letting nature heal itself and that over time, nature would sort it out. In this view, cutting trees was antithetical to conservation.

“Our argument was, ‘well, this is artificial,’” Holderman says. There was no way to know if an industrial forest would evolve into an old-growth forest, a process that can take millennia, but, he told doubters, “We know if we do this [active restoration], it’ll put this on a path to get there quicker.” So in 2011, Sempervirens began for the first time in its 125-year history to experiment with active restoration, cutting some trees to encourage others to thrive, and leaving felled trees on the ground to help restore the soil’s out-of-whack chemistry. Years of removal of fallen snags and old growth by the previous owner had left the soil nutrient poor. Sempervirens began felling trees with chain saws and moving them to modify a redwood forest for the benefit of the forest. “How you manage a forest to restore it, versus how you manage it to produce maximum commercial value, [these] have some overlapping similarities,” says Sara Barth, Sempervirens Fund’s current executive director, “but the end goals are quite different.”

Forester Nadia Hamey marks trees with blue paint she wants cut down. Here, in San Vicente Redwoods’ Deadman Gulch she encourages growth in the biggest oldest trees by felling nearby trees competing for resources.
photo by Orenda Randuch

Nadia Hamey was hired by Sempervirens and POST in 2011 to actively manage San Vicente Redwoods. She walked through the property with the conservation groups to assess the potential and challenges of the landscape. What did the land need and how would they pay for it? “When the cost of doing this came back,” Holderman says,“it scared the shit out of us.” The necessary forest restoration was complex; they knew it would ultimately require tens of millions of dollars, so the groups planned to start small at roughly $250,000 a year. That has grown to well over $1 million annually.

Holderman recalls a time he accompanied Hamey on one of the hikes, the two of them threading their way through the crowded stand of redwoods as she swiveled her attention across the forest-scape and hovered her finger before its specimens. She explained to Holderman that if she were working for Big Creek Lumber Company—a local sustainable logging company that had previously employed her—she would take and sell that tree, that tree, this tree, and that tree under the selective logging rules that applied in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But as a forester for a conservation organization like Sempervirens that was trying to restore an ecosystem, she would choose different trees. She’d also take this tree and that tree, pointing out a couple that were practically huddling in the shadow of their thicker, taller sibling, crowding its personal space.

The idea was to divvy up the 8,532 acres into three groups, each managed with a different goal. About a tenth of the property is preservation reserves, where the old-growth forest is healthy, and she does little besides weed and maintain roads and culverts. Working forest and restoration reserves account for the remaining acres. In the 3,700 acres of working forest—43 percent of the property— Hamey maintains an ecosystem with trees that might be sold. She picks out large, healthy redwoods—though not the biggest, oldest redwoods—that forestry contractors harvest and Sempervirens and co-owner POST sell to Big Creek as lumber. Annual lumber revenue fluctuates, and all of it is directed, along with public grants and private donations, to fund restoration elsewhere on the property and road repair, a cost that also fluctuates, and altogether it has amounted to about $775,000 over the last five years.

“Cutting down trees is hard—really hard. And it feels so counterintuitive to protecting forests,” says Sara Barth. Still, the partner organizations are seeing the long-term benefits of working forests taking shape. “We do not take it lightly. We want a new generation of old-growth redwoods to be established. And when we see the growth and canopies improve in the working forests we are seeing success.”

The goal is to return the restoration reserves to old-growth forest conditions, directing the chain saws away from the trees they would have been aimed at in the working forest. “You flip that on its head in the restoration reserves, and instead of removing some of the larger trees, you pretty much pick the winner,” explains Hamey. Having identified the one big champion redwood—a “future oldgrowth recruitment tree,” in technical language—you then “cut selectively around it.” Some of the accessible logs are removed to reduce fuel for wildfires, while others are either sold or burned for biomass, returning nutrients to the soil. Or as was the case for roughly 30 acres, a prescribed fire burned away the undergrowth and fallen vegetation. Tree-cutting is “the way that we make big adjustments,” Hamey says, and “as long as we don’t introduce weeds, the aftermath is amazingly cool.”

These practices are an attempt to emulate how plants, trees, and animal life interact within a forest ecosystem, enabling it to heal itself from natural disturbances such as wind, lightning storms, landslides, or pest infestations. Research that spans nearly 50 years in Redwood National Park demonstrates that the approach is working. An unnaturally dense second-growth redwood forest site there, called Holter Ridge—which averaged 2,400 trees per hectare in 1978, versus 25 to 90 trees per hectare in old-growth forests—has been thinned periodically since ’78, and the diversity of plants growing in the understory, as well as tree growth, has increased ^{see footnote number 4}.

But extensive disturbance can be a problem. Typically, the stumpy clear-cut redwood forests that have been left to recover on their own wind up far denser than old-growth forests. Where the old redwood crowns could sometimes span 100 feet, shading out everything below, felling these giants had the effect of bathing wide swaths of the forest floor in sunlight, encouraging the growth of other sun-loving and often less fire-resistant species. Today, these forests are largely occupied by them, especially hardwoods like tanoak and Doug fir. Yet all the trees, across every species, compete with one another for sunlight, water, and nutrients. The redwoods struggle to regain vigor. So Hamey thins the trees around the biggest redwoods to reduce that competition, a practice known as “crown release.” Her goal is to direct the growth of these mixed-species woods back into flourishing redwood forests that can weather (and thrive on) the occasional, moderate wildfire—their original state before European settlers arrived.

Nadia Hamey was born in the late 1970s and lived in logging camps on Vancouver Island, off the western coast of Canada. She saw industrial clear-cutting level the old forests of the Clayoquot Sound and, as a youth in the ’80s and ’90s, participated in activist blockades and protests. “It’s in my blood to fight,” she says with a chuckle. But her father, a forester, and her mother, a habitat protection officer, advised her that she wasn’t going to achieve her goals by creating roadblocks with her body and stopping loggers from getting to work. “You need to use your brain,” they told her, and “change the law.” So she enrolled at UC Berkeley and earned a degree in forestry.

“I was anti-,” Hamey reflects, on her attitude toward the timber industry. “I wanted to influence the unsound practices of logging.” Yet to learn the practice of forestry after graduation, she worked short stints for two of the biggest clear-cut logging companies on the West Coast, Weyerhaeuser and Simpson Timber Company. Then she landed a job in 2003 at Big Creek Lumber, a family-owned operation in the Santa Cruz Mountains that has been, at times, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Big Creek Lumber is now responsible for selectively logging part of the working forest in San Vicente Redwoods, along with operating its own sawmill and managing other private timberlands. Janet McCrary Webb’s grandfather, great uncle, father, and uncle started the company in 1946, after World War II. They set up a portable sawmill and began harvesting some of the timber on a neighbor’s property in the Santa Cruz Mountains, just a few miles outside of where San Vicente Redwoods now sits. They learned that once cut, redwoods will then sprout into eight or ten new trees, meaning that tree-cutting promoted the growth of the forest. “They were able to pick and choose what trees to thin and realized that thinning worked really well in that redwood forest,” McCrary Webb, now president of Big Creek, explains.

“I really came around to embracing
active management as a way to steward
forests,” says Hamey.

When outside timber operators arrived to clear-cut the forest, the family lobbied alongside advocates for Forest Practice Rules, a set of regulations governed by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the ’70s. The rules outlawed clear-cutting in the region, codifying it in the state’s Forest Practice Rules. Ever since, the only tree-cutting allowed has been “single tree selection.” This means foresters can’t create a gap in the forest larger than half an acre or remove a tree that’s not within 75 feet of another healthy and industrious leafy conifer, like a redwood. The goal, essentially, is to maintain a standing, thriving forest, whether it is managed as a working forest—one steadily supplying wood and other natural resources—or a mostly untouched forest preserve. The rules enabled small companies like Big Creek to remain in business.

Hamey calls her more than 10 years of past work for Big Creek Lumber, and her brief stints at other forestry companies, valuable learning experiences. Applying different silvicultural—forest science and management—practices could achieve wildly varying effects on a forest, nudging the direction of its growth and evolution. She also realized that in areas where the ecosystem was intact and healthy, it made sense to preserve land as wilderness, but when it came to more damaged woodland ecosystems, certain tree-cutting techniques could also return the forest to health. “I really came around to embracing active management as a way to steward forests,” she says.

➊

➋

➌

➍

➎

➊ To help restore heavily burned areas in San Vicente Redwoods (SVR), dead trees are logged and turned into biochar, a soil supplement. ➋ The thick, post-fire understory of SVR’s Deadman Gulch slows restoration efforts in 2024. Note the worker’s orange helmet in the background. ➌ Sempervirens Fund executive director, Sara Barth, visits Big Basin State Park after the CZU fire in 2020. ➍ Smaller trees with pink ribbons will be cut down in SVR’s restoration reserve to spur growth in a larger, older tree. ➎ SVR in 2016.

Buds in a redwood trunk sprout after fire, creating the green fuzzy “sweater” look seen in San Vicente Redwoods in 2022.

The post Why Cut Redwoods? appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

photo by Orenda Randuch

The Benefits of Old-Growth

Seeing an ancient coast redwood in person is awesome. Capable of reaching heights more than three hundred feet tall–taller than the Statue of Liberty–redwoods are providing both habitat and unparalleled carbon storage every inch of the way. As redwoods grow older, typically about 150 years old in ideal habitat conditions, they not only grow taller, they also grow wider, thicker, and reiterate their trunks–creating lots of space for Co2 on the inside and space for wildlife and plants on the outside.

As they age, redwoods also become more resilient: better able to protect themselves and support the forest. Their thick, armor-like bark can grow to be a foot thick–helping to protect them from fire, pests, and rot. Old-growth canopies are higher and harder for fire to reach. Their well-established root systems spread 100-feet wide and interconnect with fungi and other trees throughout the forest to share nutrients and information. Old-growth redwoods are able to help support the forest as a whole, and with their ancient lifespans they are able to live for millennia. Read more facts about Redwoods.

Old-growth redwoods are not only crucial for forest health, they are crucial for the fight against climate change and species’ survival.

photo by Orenda Randuch

The Changing Forest

Redwoods’ size and resilience also made them incredibly desirable as building materials. The redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains were being clear cut to build, and rebuild when disasters like the 1906 earthquake struck, the growing communities around them. While your fellow supporters formed Sempervirens Fund in 1900 to protect the remaining redwood forests, many forests were already reduced to stumps. Only 5% or less old-growth redwoods are estimated to remain throughout their entire range today. While redwoods are incredibly resilient and capable of resprouting, entire forests were growing back at the same time which created forests that were too close together to grow as large as they once were and without many of the benefits of old-growth to help support them.

Redwoods at Big Basin show resilience 5 years after CZU Fire, story by CBS News Bay Area

Today, clear cut logging is not allowed in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But the forests, struggling to grow back in tight quarters without the assistance of their elders, face the additional challenges of increased droughts, high temperatures, and fire. When the 2020 CZU Fire ignited across the Santa Cruz Mountains, forests were already at a disadvantage–close together, hot, and dry. The unprecedented fire tore through 86,000 acres including nearly every protected acre Sempervirens Fund cares for. While most of the redwoods are expected to recover from the fire, the urgency to make forests as resilient as possible for the increasingly extreme and unpredictable effects of climate change ahead was starkly underscored.

Fortunately, Sempervirens Fund had decades of experience resetting redwood forests from past damage utilizing a forest management approach called Restoration Forestry. Active restoration forestry techniques had helped redwood forests recuperate more quickly and they could help establish healthy forest conditions like old-growth redwoods in decades rather than centuries

Restoration Forestry

Restoration forestry can help reset forest health and resilience so forests can provide fresh air, clean water, habitat, and carbon storage. Despite being backed by both cutting-edge science and traditional Indigenous practices, the methods can seem antithetical to their goals at first–after all, wasn't it cutting and fire that got the forest into this state in the first place?–but armed with research, humility, and observation, the results are becoming clearer and reinforce the need for our active management of forests.

When Sempervirens Fund protected a former tree farm in 2008, once known as Sempervirens 236, it was clear the forest near Boulder Creek would need more restoration forestry than any property we had protected before, in order to help return the industrial rows of trees back into a healthy, diverse, resilient forest. With the guidance of professionals like Forester Nadia Hamey, a plan was put in place to reduce competition and potential fuel for a fire, and increase the growth of larger redwoods, known as old-growth recruitment, and improve the forest’s resilience to challenges like fires and droughts. By 2019, we were already seeing an increase in biodiversity on the forest floor–a sign the forest can support more species. In 2023, Sempervirens 236’s redwood forests, now healthy and thriving, were added to Castle Rock State Park.

While a redwood forest might be able to restore itself given centuries and ideal conditions, the threats of climate change are unpredictable and urgent. Through restoration forestry techniques, forests like those at Sempervirens 236 can recover from the past and be resilient for the future more quickly.

photo by Rebecca Thomas

Forestry Techniques

The Living Laboratory

Restoration Forestry techniques like these are now helping the largest private forest remaining in the Santa Cruz Mountains recover from a history of logging, mining, and the severe 2020 CZU Fire, and regain resiliency as quickly as possible so the forest can both survive and help fight climate change. In the forests of San Vicente Redwoods that humans have exploited for nearly a century, we’re attempting to strike a careful balance of human involvement.

photo by Orenda Randuch

“Restoration at scale was always going to be tricky,” says Sempervirens Fund’s Executive Director Sara Barth. San Vicente Redwoods is a living laboratory where we seek to enhance its health by applying insights from academic research, other conservation organizations (including Peninsula Open Space Trust, Save the Redwoods League, and Land Trust Santa Cruz County), and the restoration forestry practices that helped reset Sempervirens 236 on a healthy trajectory for recovery. “Having a restoration and working forest in tandem has taught us a lot about not only supporting the forest’s long-term health but also how to prepare for and respond to wildfire.”

Protected in 2011, San Vicente Redwoods vast 8,532 acres include different plant communities, topographies, and different needs for recovery. Forester Nadia Hamey helped to prioritize the needs of the forest into different sections: Preservation - where the forest needs maintenance to stay healthy; Restoration - where the forest benefits from strategic thinning so trees can grow larger; and Working Forest - where the Old-Growth Recruitment helps redwoods gain much needed old-growth characteristics more quickly.

Any trees that are strategically cut for the forest’s health further benefit the forest by being utilized for habitat on the forest floor or in creeks, processed into biomass to return nutrients to the soil without the risk of becoming fuel for fire, or sold as lumber and reinvested into further work to restore San Vicente Redwoods.

Experts Dig into the Controversy

Restoration forestry and relying on sustainable logging to help fund conservation of San Vicente Redwoods has been controversial and it remains complicated today, even for its advocates. That includes Hamey. Logging can be done well or poorly, just like many other resource management objectives. When done well, it provides a sustainable source of wood with little long-term impact to the forest ecosystem,” she said. “We can use the revenue from timber harvesting to help achieve other land management objectives, like weed control, road maintenance, fuel reduction, large woody debris installation, etc.”

Dan Sicular, a California environmental planning consultant with 35 years of experience, believes that selling the logs harvested through thinning can help to fund forest restoration work, though he knows this view is controversial. His view acknowledges the reality of the outsized role of the timber economy in the West today; California’s forest industry contributes $39 billion to the state’s economy. With logging companies owning some of the largest tracts of land in the Santa Cruz Mountains, “I see some conservation benefit from having an active logging industry,” Sicular argued, especially when the alternative is for the companies to subdivide the parcels and sell them off, fragmenting crucial habitats. Also, since the logging companies don’t want their investments to burn up, they have a strong incentive to manage their land to prevent and control wildfire.

video by Jordan Plotsky

Tim Hyland, an environmental scientist for California State Parks, argues that in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the problem today is that there are too many trees, since forest managers stopped using fire to thin their ranks, especially fire-sensitive species like the Douglas fir. “So much damage to these ecosystems has happened in the last 100 to 200 years that it’s very easy for people to feel like, ‘please don’t touch it and it'll be fine.’”

Hyland acknowledged that, left alone for hundreds of years, the forest might eventually recover its state prior to Euro-American settlement, with one large tree out-competing the others to create a forest of giant redwoods that are widely-spaced from one another. But in a warming, drying climate, the smaller trees now crowding the understory are more susceptible to catastrophic, high-severity fires that leave significant damage. “A whole bunch of little sticks burn a lot better than one great big stick,” he explained. And since California forest managers have kept fire largely at bay for over a century, “lighting a fire in them is like playing with matches in a dynamite factory,” he said. “The fuels have built up to a point where it's extremely challenging to introduce fire in a safe way.” In this scenario, mechanical thinning of the smaller trees—cutting them, in other words—is a necessary safety measure before conducting prescribed burns.

video by Jordan Plotsky

Even while acknowledging that some trees must be cut down, Hyland remains skeptical. Felling the trees and dragging them out of the forest kicks up dust, disturbs the environment, and risks introducing invasive plants through the heavy equipment. “My primary problem with it is that humans are at the helm,” he said, “and if the decisions are influenced by financial considerations, then they're not primarily influenced by what the land needs.”

At San Vicente Redwoods, restoration forestry has been practiced with a lot of humility, evaluation, and a willingness to adjust if tactics aren’t working. Results of work done before the CZU Fire are incredibly encouraging and provide insight into where and how restoration forestry can help the forest recover from that fire and help protect it and nearby communities for the next fire.

Results for Redwoods

In February 2020–just a few months before thousands of lightning strikes ignited the CZU Fire in August 2020, crucial restoration forestry work took place that both helped protect the forest and nearby communities. Thirty acres in San Vicente Redwoods’ Restoration Reserve forest section were treated using prescribed and cultural burns, and more than 15 miles of shaded fuel breaks were created. The areas with prescribed burns appear to have weathered the blaze much better than the adjacent untreated parts of the forest. And the shaded fuel break helped fire crews stop the fire from spreading to a nearby community.

A photo of blackened tree trunks with healthy green canopies intact above was treated with a shaded fuel break prior to the CZU Fire and burned less severely. A photo of mostly standing dead trees with only a handful of trees bearing green regrowth and much more dense understory growth along the ground was not treated with a shaded fuel break prior to the CZU Fire and burned more severely. Photos taken in 2023 by Ian Bornarth.

“We’re seeing results that indicate restoration forestry are these redwood forests' best chance of recovering from past damage and both surviving and fighting climate change,” said Barth. Restoration Forestry is a key component to Sempervirens Fund’s Climate Action Plan, a plan to accelerate the protection and resilience of redwoods by 2030.

The post Growing Old-Growth appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

photo by Thomas Rex Beverly

Thomas Rex Beverly has dangled from ropes in deep caves and off Patagonian glaciers to masterfully record the sounds of nature which help bring stories like CODA, The Last of Us, and Frozen II to life. This time, he hopes to dangle overnight from an old-growth redwood in the “Valley of the Giants” at Camp Jones Gulch, which you protected in 2022. Excited to uncover sounds of nature nearly imperceptible to the human ear alone, he cups his ears listening intently in the old-growth grove to gauge how long sounds travel beneath the ancient trees. After carefully listening to a subtle gust of wind blow through the grove, he explains the sound of the wind is formed by the length of the tree’s needles; their distance from the ground mellows the sound.

As he looks for ideal spaces to place his microphones attuned to different levels of noise on the forest floor, he hopes to hear water, rain, wind, birds, and the hollows of the redwoods as they can only be heard by one of the most sensitive microphones in the world. But recording at Camp Jones Gulch has different challenges than some of Thomas’ more remote locations. Just miles away from the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, airplanes occasionally make their way above the canopy and enthusiastic young YMCA campers below.

To capture as much of the forest’s subtle sounds as possible, Thomas camped at Camp Jones Gulch for a week. What he heard were astonishing sounds that set him on a magical microphone mystery.

Visit Sounds of the Forest for an immersive journey into this environment and hear the solitude of the forest come to life.

Join Thomas Rex Beverly on his Curiosity Stories quest to hear the redwood forest as you never have before.

Subscribe to Sempervirens Fund’s YouTube channel to follow Thomas' journey in the first season of Curiosity Stories.

More to Explore

• Watch more Curiosity Stories about the wonders of redwoods
• Subscribe on YouTube for episode 2 of Thomas’ Curiosity Story
• Learn more about redwoods

The post Recording Redwoods: Sounds of the Forest appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studios

We’re delighted you have joined us as Sempervirens Fund’s first Forest Fellow! What does being a Forest Fellow mean to you?

"It’s an incredible honor. Redwoods are one of the wonders that first pulled me to California more than 20 years ago. I still feel this awe that drew me to Northern California. To be the first Sempervirens Fund Forest Fellow brings a smile to my face."

What do you hope to accomplish as a Forest Fellow?

"I hope to learn as much as I can about coast redwoods forests and create art that deepens our relationship with these spectacular ecosystems."

Jane Kim, fine artist and Sempervirens Fund's first Forest Fellow, courtesy of Ink Dwell Studios

What draws you to redwoods and the habitats and species of the Santa Cruz Mountains region?

"I’ve loved trees my whole life, and coast redwoods are some of the most extraordinary. From their lifespan and magnitude to all their invisible secrets of survival, coast redwoods hold eons of wisdom. The Santa Cruz Mountains are especially interesting because of their more pronounced climate zones relative to the northern range. For example, in the southern range, redwoods are having to adapt to higher temperatures and less fog. We can observe adaptations of redwoods between varying climates to understand their survival limits."

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studios

Did the CZU Fire change how you see, connect with, or depict redwoods or other species in the Santa Cruz mountain region?

"Of course! I knew that redwoods are resilient, but I had no idea that there were so many adaptations invisible to the naked eye like the tree’s amazing ability to store arbuscular-mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), in unique structures in their roots referred to as “rhizonodes.” This is just one example! So many others that I’m learning along the way. It shook my own understanding of dying, dormancy, regeneration, and cycles."

Watch a resilient redwood stump surprise Jane in episode 2 of Curiosity Stories.

On the 4th anniversary of the CZU Fire, you shared that redwood trees might be our exact opposite in nature. Could you tell us more about this idea?

"I think of redwoods as our opposite in their approach to living. They play the long game! Our lifespan averages ~80 years and I do believe that limits our ability to truly be long-term planners.

A redwood’s life can span more than one thousand years. And the way the redwood is able to live this long is by adapting to its environment rather than controlling the environment. The fog loving trees can even produce a bit of its own fog! Terpenes, the compound that give redwood its odor, when released into the air, they form tiny particles that can become the condensation nuclei, or seed, for fog.

People on the other hand, want to control their environment to fit the monoculture life that we have created. Trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains look different than the ones in Humboldt because they have adapted to different places. Let’s look at Arizona or even Southern California. No matter the environment, humans force a certain way of living. In these drier climates, if we were like redwoods, we’d create homes and infrastructure in an adaptive manner like using composting toilets instead of ones that use water. Homes could be subterranean so less energy would be used for air conditioning. But humans define a standard of living and wildly alter the environment to meet the standard. It’s all backwards!"

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studios

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studios

How are you exploring humans’ relationship with the elements in your current series?

"I am printing a redwood cookie that was collected at the Gateway to Big Basin. This is reminiscent of logging and our initial relationship to redwoods as a lumber source."

You recently shared your piece FIRE which layers detailed painted woodpeckers atop a black and white print of tree rings seemingly lit from fire within its cracks. What can you tell us about the inspiration behind this piece and the woodpecker’s role?

"There will be four pieces in this upcoming series. Each one will focus on our classical elements—fire, water, earth, air—and how redwood forests are interconnected. Pileated woodpeckers benefit from burned snags and cavities in redwood forests. Their nests are then used by several smaller birds and animals. Ultimately, FIRE will depict several stories about the impacts of fire on a redwood tree and forest."

Can you share your process to create art like this?

"My practice as an artist starts with a story and then grows with research. I knew that I wanted to explore redwoods from many angles and the elements felt like a way to tell a whole story. What makes their way into the final artwork really depends on the journey research takes me. One of the most exciting things about the Forest Fellowship is the access and support I have to research, field trips, and scientific community. Without the support and collaboration of Sempervirens Fund, I couldn’t have collected the massive redwood rounds from the stump at Jones Gulch YMCA camp."

Watch Jane cut a “cookie” round from a redwood stump in episode 1 of Curiosity Stories.

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A post shared by INK DWELL (@inkdwell)

What do you hope your work in this series will inspire?

"At the end of the day, reality is simply shaped by collective perspective. Art has, since the dawn of mankind, shaped our perspective. I hope that by celebrating redwood adaptations, we may be inspired to adopt some of those into our own decisions around human infrastructure and the role we play within the ecosystem rather than dominating and changing it."

Want a behind the scenes peek at the redwood art Jane Kim has been working on at Ink Dwell Studios? Watch Jane Kim take nature from Forest to Canvas Under the Redwoods.

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studios

More to Explore

• Watch Jane embark on her journey to learn more about redwoods in Curiosity Stories
• See Jane’s work illustrate complex concepts in our Redwoods and Climate series
• Learn how Jane transforms science into art in Illustrating Nature Under the Redwoods

The post The Opposite of Redwoods appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

The post Fall and Winter Hikes appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

One of my favorite parks to visit is Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, located in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The redwood grove in the park has a beautiful accessible trail that is great for families with small children, elders, and people with mobility limitations. The trail has an interpretive walk and people can learn more about the amazing redwood trees and why they are so important to our environment. On this visit, I learned that redwood trees produce both male and female cones that can provide between 60 to 120 seeds which is incredible and a valuable source for preserving redwood tree growth. There is also a visitor center with tons of information on the park, redwood trees, and wildlife. Often there are activities for youth to participate in and information on park programs for families, school groups and visitors.

For me, having an accessible trail is important because of my limitations at the moment. My high blood pressure makes it hard for me to walk on trails with more than a 250 ft incline. I'm also learning to navigate an injury from a fall that has made my mobility limited, and I’m listening to my body when it needs to rest. I’m finding that slower movement has made me appreciate nature so much more. It’s easier to spot wildlife, observe moss up close, feel the soft bark on trees and hear the wind blow within the trees. It’s truly a remarkable feeling to spend some time in a redwood forest.

I’m so grateful for parks like Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park that offer trails like the Redwood Grove Loop. The grove provides a place of exploration, healing, learning and gives that WOW feeling. The loop will have you looking up at these beautiful towering trees that are so tall you cannot see the top from the ground floor.

I can honestly say that spending time underneath redwood trees has helped me adjust to the high blood pressure medication I was prescribed. I think the benefits of spending time amongst these ancient trees is beneficial to everyone, but especially important to those that have had to transition to taking medication, overcoming an injury or finding a balance for one's mental health. Visiting redwood parks definitely helps me gather my thoughts, have deep conversations with friends and family. When I’m alone sometimes I find a place to sit and write in my journal or jot down notes of things to accomplish or changes to be made.

At the end of my walk on this visit, I felt grateful for my family, close friendships, and the ability to visit this special park not too far from my home in San Francisco. As I learn to work with a new medication and continue healing from a back injury, I know places like Henry Cowell State Park can provide a place of healing and wellness not just for me but many other people as well.

The Redwood Grove Loop Trail

You can follow the Redwood Grove Loop trail at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park to find your own healing under the redwood groves. Trails Rx data can help you find the right trail for your health goals and professional wellness suggestions can help maximize the benefits of your next outing.

Redwood Grove Loop

Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park

Immerse yourself in a living exhibit of ancient redwoods

0.9 miles

Easy

Loop

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Properties acquired by Sempervirens Fund since the 2020 CZU fire will help establish the Saddle Mountain Welcome Area at Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

Boulder Creek, Calif. (April 26, 2024) — Today, Sempervirens Fund, California’s first land trust, announced the purchase of two properties adjacent to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which are intended to support California State Parks in creating a new entrance at Big Basin, ensuring the long-term health of its old-growth redwoods, and improving access for visitors, especially in response to the 2020 CZU fire.

Although only 10 acres, the two properties combine with 184 acres of land protected by Sempervirens Fund since 2022, in the conservation area the state agency calls Saddle Mountain. Combined, the nearly 200 acres of redwoods will be key in Reimagining Big Basin as State Parks envisions the relocation of park infrastructure like visitor services and employee housing away from their former location near prime old-growth redwood habitat. Planning for reimagining Big Basin commenced following the CZU Fire in 2020, which burned 97% of Big Basin, including the original visitor’s center and other park services buildings.

Assemblymember Gail Pellerin’s AB 2103, which passed out of committee earlier this week, makes it easier for State Parks to acquire land for Big Basin, as well as Butano and Año Nuevo State Parks.

The view from Sterrenzee Ridgetop, one of six properties protected for the Saddle Mountain Conservation Area since the 2020 CZU fire. Photo by Orenda Randuch.

“We’re thrilled to be able to expand protected land in the Saddle Mountain Conservation Area and look forward to State Parks acquiring the 200 acres to secure the new entrance to Big Basin,” said Sara Barth, Executive Director of Sempervirens Fund. “A big takeaway from the Reimagining Big Basin process was that we need to relocate critical park infrastructure away from the old-growth forests, and this land is the perfect site to make that vision a reality. Advancing AB 2103 would help expedite Reimagining Big Basin at a critical time.”

“AB 2103 will help provide State Parks timely transfers of land acquired by conservation organizations near Big Basin, Año Nuevo, and Butano State Parks to speed up the land acquisition process and permanently protect lands for conservation, cultural, or recreational purposes,” stated Gail Pellerin (D- Santa Cruz). “Following the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Wildfire, which burned across the entirety of Big Basin Redwoods State Park and portions of surrounding parks, this bill is important to reimagine the future of Big Basin, California’s oldest state park.”

Both properties, located in the Boulder Creek Watershed, are sparsely forested with second growth redwoods and hardwoods and contain very impressive views of the upper San Lorenzo Valley. Sempervirens Fund now owns 6 properties in the Saddle Mountain Conservation Area, including the Gateway to Big Basin, Saddle Mountain Vista, and the properties that comprise Sterrenzee Ridgetop.

The Park Core Vision Concepts for Big Basin with the entrance and welcome area at Saddle Mountain. From www.reimaginingbigbasin.org

Together they are likely to be the future home for new visitor-serving facilities at Big Basin. State Parks’ Reimagining Big Basin Vision Summary from 2022 identifies Saddle Mountain as the ideal location to create a park welcome center with some new park buildings and day-use parking away from the old-growth redwood forests where they have historically been housed. Relocating park development and infrastructure, most of which were destroyed by the CZU Fire, out of the forest will increase the health and resiliency of Big Basin’s old-growth redwoods.

“Reimagining Big Basin will only be successful with partners stepping up to advance critical needs, like expanding the area of parklands around Saddle Mountain to accommodate necessary visitor-serving facilities,” said Chris Spohrer, Superintendent, Santa Cruz District-California State Parks. “We are grateful to Sempervirens Fund and their donors for protecting nearly 200-acres of forests at the entrance to Big Basin over the last three years.”

Sempervirens Fund paid $845,000 for both properties, and funding for the purchases came from the Lipman Family Foundation and more than 600 individual donors, including one bequest.

The post NEWS: Sempervirens Fund Acquires Properties for New Entrance to Big Basin Redwoods State Park; AB 2103 Advances in State Legislature appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

But when hiking through a redwood forest, it’s probably the towering trees, not the lichens, that you first notice. An observant individual might see a pale bluish-green dust on a tree’s lower trunk, or maybe a myriad of miniscule scales commingling with red-capped stalks. Known as dust lichen (Lepraria sp.) and pixie cup lichen (Cladonia sp.), respectively, these two common lichens often colonize the damp bases of large, old redwood trees.

Bluish-green powder of a dust lichen (Lepraria sp.) growing on redwood trunk. Photo credit: Allison Green Kidder.

Red-capped stalks of lipstick cup lichen (Cladonia macilenta) are peeking up among the tiny scales at their base. The red caps are fruiting bodies where the fungal spores are produced. Lipstick cup lichen is one of several pixie cup lichens commonly found in redwood forests. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg.

However, not many lichens can tolerate the low-light conditions of the forest understory. In fact, the vast majority of lichen biodiversity in a redwood forest is hidden high above the ground.

Levels of Lichen

On the massive trunk, miniature pin lichens (Calicium sp. and Chaenotheca sp.) and the tiny scales of a clam lichen (Carbonicola sp.), including species nobody has seen before (Williams & Tibell 2008, Reese Næsborg et al. 2019, Bendiksby et al. 2018), occupy furrows in the fibrous bark.

Three species that were new to science were discovered during climbs in just 24 redwood trees. From left to right: redwood stubble (Calicium sequoiae), long-spored stubble (Chaenotheca longispora), and canopy froth (Xylopsora canopeorum). All three were found on the thick, fibrous bark of large trunks between 16 and 263 ft above ground. Photo credits: left and middle, Rikke Reese Næsborg; right: Einar Timdal.

You need a hand lens or a magnifying glass to spot these tiny stubble lichens (Calicium sp.) that can cover large areas of the trunk despite their miniature size. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg.

This clam lichen (Carbonicola anthracophila) has an affinity for burnt bark and wood, but will also occupy the unburnt, fibrous bark of large trunks. Photo credit: Einar Timdal.

The flaky bark of small, sinuous redwood branches is adorned by saucer lichen (Ochrolechia sp.) showing off its tiny, pale orange discs over a white background.

Saucer lichens (Ochrolechia sp.) are common on redwood bark. Although they are usually decorated with abundant little pale-orange fruiting bodies, sometimes a paint-like splash of white is the only evidence that a lichen is growing there. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg.

Yellow-green, leaf-like, greenshield lichens (Flavoparmelia caperata) cover the entire upper surface of a branch.

Greenshield lichen (Flavoparmelia caperata) and its look-alike speckled greenshield lichen (Flavopunctelia flaventior, insert) can be tricky to tell apart, but look for tiny white dots speckling the surface of the speckled greenshield lichen. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg, inset: Stephen Sharnoff (CC0 1.0 (Public-domain)

Splintered wood chunks left behind from sheared off branches may hold a completely different community of lichen species.

Dead pencil-thick twigs can be so covered in lichens that the twig is barely visible.

One little redwood twig can host entire lichen communities—this one is home to at least six different species. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg.

As the elevator finally reaches the tree top, you might see pale yellow-green witch’s hair lichens (Alectoria sp.), beard lichens (Usnea sp.), and brown horsehair lichens (Bryoria sp.) tangled like tinsel in the outermost branches and leaves. Tube lichens (Hypogymnia sp.) are also abundant in the upper crown.

Witch’s hair lichen (Alectoria sp.) drapes over branches. This kind of pendant lichen will often fragment, disperse in the wind, and then continue growing if landing on different branch in a suitable location. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg.

Looking up toward the very top if the tree, lots of beard lichens (Usnea sp.) and tube lichens (Hypogymnia sp.) are visible. These species can tolerate, and perhaps even prefer, high exposure to sunlight, wind, and repeated cycles of wetting and drying. Photo credit: Rikke Reese Næsborg.

Horse-hair lichens (Bryoria sp.), here seen in the lower crown, are among species that in the southern part of the redwood range are mainly found in the upper and middle crowns of the trees. Like witch’s hair lichens and beard lichens, horse-hair lichens also fragment and can continue growing if they land in a suitable location. Photo credit: Troy McMullin (CC BY-SA 3.0).

High and Dry

Why do the lichen communities change with height? That’s because different parts of the tree offer different microhabitats, and many lichens are quite picky about their living conditions. At the base of the tree, conditions are typically evenly humid, dark, and cool, and the bark of the tree is thick and fibrous. Some species, such as dust lichens and pixie cup lichens in addition to many types of mosses, prefer these conditions. Moving up the tree it gets increasingly drier, brighter, and warmer, and the bark gets thinner and flakier. Finally, the tree top is more frequently wetted by gentle rain and dew, but it also dries out fast due to wind and sun exposure. Some species, such as witch’s hair, beard lichens, and horsehair lichens, prefer these tree top conditions and can therefore reach their highest abundance there.

Dr. Næsborg in a redwood canopy at Big Basin, by Wendy Baxter, Ancient Forest Society

Hidden Redwood Ecosystems

At first glance, redwood trees may appear to be a poor host to lichens, especially compared to neighboring conifers such as Douglas-fir and western hemlock that typically support much higher biomass of lichens. However, the number of lichen species found on redwood can be far greater than on these other conifers. For example, a single redwood tree in Big Basin Redwoods State Park was host to more than 100 species of lichens and mosses, and over 300 species were documented in just 24 trees across six different redwood state parks. This incredible diversity is likely a result of the many different types of microhabitats that occur in old redwood trees.

“a single redwood tree in Big Basin Redwoods State Park was host to more than 100 species of lichens and mosses”

And since some redwoods endure millennia of punishing winter storms and ferocious crown fires capable of shearing large branches and snapping enormous trunks, the resulting damage offers a myriad of microhabitats to lichen communities, including charcoal, splintered wood, rot pockets, and even deep accumulations of canopy humus perched in cavities. Some lichen species favor burnt wood, while others prefer hard, unburnt wood. In the northern part of the redwood range, decaying pockets of wood are commonly occupied by shrubs such as evergreen huckleberry or even trees such as western hemlock. Compared to redwood, the bark of these epiphytic shrubs and trees has different chemical and textural properties, so they sometimes harbor very different lichens, further amplifying the total number of lichen species found in redwood forest canopies.

A newt next to lichen on a fallen branch on the ground in a redwood forest, by Amanda Krauss

If you’re interested in learning more about lichens, start by noticing the shapes and colors of lichens and what they grow on. And if you visit a redwood forest soon after a storm, you won’t need the glass elevator to see more of what the canopy hides—a fallen branch or trunk offers an easy glimpse into the communities that grow high in a redwood forest canopy. Happy lichenizing!

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Sempervirens Fund has protected 120 acres in the Upper Zayante watershed in perpetuity. Photo by Orenda Randuch

Los Altos, Calif. (Jan. 4, 2024) —With the donation of a conservation easement from private landowners to Sempervirens Fund, California’s first land trust, 120 acres in the Upper Zayante watershed will be protected in perpetuity. The land includes more than 67 acres of redwood forest, mostly second-growth trees with some residual old-growth redwoods, Douglas fir, oak woodland, mixed hardwood, maritime chaparral, chamise scrubland, and riparian woodland. Ultimately feeding into the regionally critical San Lorenzo River, the Upper Zayante River watershed is important to steelhead habitat and recovery of coho salmon.

The conservation easement protects the land, known to the owners as “Isabel Upani,” in perpetuity, and permanently restricts development, subdivision, and commercial timber harvest, while allowing the owners to continue to access and enjoy the land for low-impact recreational purposes. Sempervirens Fund will implement stewardship initiatives to improve the health and resilience of the forest habitats, which could include conservation measures such as fuel reduction, waterway restoration, and vegetation management.

“This is a great moment for conservation in the Santa Cruz mountains, and we’re so thrilled to partner with passionate private conservationists to protect and steward important redwood forests in the Upper Zayante watershed,” said Sara Barth, Executive Director of Sempervirens Fund. “With abundant natural resources, including redwood forests, and home to critical habitat for endangered species, Sempervirens Fund will make sure this land is conserved and stewarded for generations to come.”

The land supports many native animal species, and the upland redwood vegetation community on the land likely supports rare species such as the San Francisco Dusky-footed woodrat, pileated woodpecker, and the Santa Cruz black salamander. The land contains dozens of remnant old-growth redwood trees among the more plentiful younger second-growth.

The donated easement of 120 acres, worth just over $680,000, exemplifies an emerging model between conservation groups and private landowners to preserve land from development and address the ongoing climate crisis. This partnership with these landowners aligns with President Biden’s goal, and Gov. Newsom’s 30×30 Initiative, to conserve 30% of lands and waterways by 2030 through collaborations that center on conservation, resiliency, and inclusion.

Just last year, Sempervirens Fund purchased a nearly-$10 million conservation easement from The Y of San Francisco to permanently protect more than 900 acres, including the largest unprotected stand of old-growth redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, at Camp Jones Gulch in La Honda. With this latest 120 acres, Sempervirens Fund has protected more than 36,000 acres of land in the Santa Cruz mountains, and currently owns and stewards more than 12,000 acres.

“Redwoods sequester more carbon than any plant species in the world and as we continue to stand up against an aggressively changing climate, conservation partnerships like this one are more critical than ever,” said Barth. “We stand ready at Sempervirens Fund to work with other community organizations, conservation groups, and private landowners to conserve and protect as many acres as we can.”

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photo by Orenda Randuch

2023 News

Sempervirens Fund Celebrates Plan to Expand California’s State Parks by 30,000 Acres

California State Parks and Sempervirens Fund announce the permanent addition of the 153-acre NoraBella property to expand Big Basin State Park.

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Gateway to Big Basin Added to Big Basin Redwoods State Park

California State Parks and Sempervirens Fund announce the permanent addition of the 153-acre NoraBella property to expand Big Basin State Park.

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A Stewardship Story: Return to Nature

Surviving since nearly the age of the dinosaurs, redwoods are resilient—but only 5% of them have survived the last century and a half. Human impacts have left redwood forests struggling to recover. Together, we are carefully caring for the redwood forests you protect, resetting their natural systems, and helping them return to nature. Take a peek behind the trees at how you have helped the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz mountains–some of the most biodiverse and threatened on Earth–this year.

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Ten Ways Nature Can Help You Have a Healthy 2026

The new year often brings contemplation, motivation and resolution for greater health and happiness. In 2026, consider adding nature to your list. Nature encounters can be big, bold adventures, or family-friendly and free. There is something for everyone in this list of ten reasons, doctor’s orders, to opt outdoors this year:

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Reimagining Big Basin

In August 2021, a year after the CZU fire, California State Parks launched a visioning process for Reimagining Big Basin. Learn more, connect, and stay involved.

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Bat Chat: Nocturnal Knowledge with Dr. Winifred Frick

They’re more than creatures that go bump in the night—bats are important mammals in the redwood forest. Learn more about the bats that call California home with Dr. Winifred Frick, Chief Scientist at Bat Conservation International and a professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz.

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NEWS: Legislation Cutting Green Tape for Expanding California State Parks Now Law

AB 679 cuts through green tape so California State Parks and conservation partners can move quickly to protect our majestic redwoods, expand parklands, and bring new life to Big Basin and other parks devastated by the CZU Fire.

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Forest Stewardship: Creek to Sea

As we mark the four-year anniversary of the Mill Creek dam removal, we’re celebrating new signs of hope for coho and the interconnected habitats of the Santa Cruz Mountains—from creek to sea—exploring how they support one another, and how we support them.

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Behind the Scenes: A Botanical Survey of Castle Rock Hollow

Among the hallmarks of healthy redwood forests are trees of varying ages growing and thriving together. Achieving this diversity of ages, or chronodiversity, can improve old-growth conditions, which leads to greater habitat diversity—two essential outcomes for redwoods to thrive in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Read on to learn about the importance of chronodiveristy in coast redwood forests.

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NEWS: Sempervirens Fund welcomes Raj-Ann Rekhi to its board of directors

Raj-Ann Rekhi Gill joins Sempervirens Fund’s board of directors to help lead conservation efforts at California’s first land trust.

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125 Years

125 years in photos! In 1900, a group of citizen activists banded together to form Sempervirens Club—now Sempervirens Fund—and committed to protecting and nurturing coast redwoods. As we reflect on our legacy and look forward to the future, we are forever thankful to our vast community of supporters like you for your unwavering commitment to protecting redwoods.

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Chronodiversity in Redwood Forests

Among the hallmarks of healthy redwood forests are trees of varying ages growing and thriving together. Achieving this diversity of ages, or chronodiversity, can improve old-growth conditions, which leads to greater habitat diversity—two essential outcomes for redwoods to thrive in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Read on to learn about the importance of chronodiveristy in coast redwood forests.

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Redwoods Festival | May 18, 2025

On May 18, 2025, 125 years after Sempervirens Fund was founded, hundreds of supporters joined us at the historic Roaring Camp, for our first-ever Redwoods Festival to celebrate 125 years of protecting redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains! Thank you for your support!

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Why Cut Redwoods?

More than a decade ago, Sempervirens Fund was confronted with a choice: do we actively manage the forests we protect to improve their health, or do we continue to protect the redwoods as we have for more than a century and allow nature to heal on its own timeline? Active management to restore the forest would include the need to cut down trees for the benefit of the forest. With the increasing urgency to help redwoods recover from past human impacts and prepare for accelerating climate changes ahead, we collaborated with Bay Nature Magazine and author Audrea Lim to look at the shift in our redwood revolution and explore the outcomes.

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Growing Old-Growth

An old-growth redwood is huge. One of the largest living things to ever grace the planet. And their size isn’t just impressive, it’s important. In the Santa Cruz Mountains very few old-growth redwoods remain, but you’re helping to grow the old-growth of tomorrow, today. Together, we’re restoring redwood forests faster for the trees, for wildlife, for the fight against climate change, and for future generations.

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Honoring Herb Grench

Sempervirens Fund joins the conservation community in mourning the passing of Herb Grench, a visionary leader whose efforts helped shape the Bay Area’s open space landscape. Herb dedicated his life to protecting the natural world, and his contributions continue to benefit our region’s forests, wildlife, and communities. In the early 1970s, Herb played a pivotal…

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Sempervirens in Elementis

In her new art series, Sempervirens in Elementis—Latin for ever living in the elements, Sempervirens Fund’s Forest Fellow Jane Kim explores the relationship between redwoods and the elements: water, fire, earth, and air.

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David Cowman joins Sempervirens Fund as Director of Land Stewardship

David Cowman joins Sempervirens Fund as its new, and first-ever, Director of Land Stewardship, signaling the 125-year old organization’s increased emphasis on the restoration and future health of redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

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Redwoods and Fog

We know fog when we see it, but what is fog? Fog clouds linger in cool, damp forests, lending an air of mystery and beauty around us, but the mystery is a simple one. Read on to learn about fog and their magical relationship with redwoods.

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The post 2023 News: What You’ve Made Possible appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

photo by Kim Nelson and Dan Cushing

Rare in the Redwoods

It’s extraordinary to see a marbled murrelet in the redwoods. But the reason may surprise you. Despite being an endangered species and in the Santa Cruz mountains facing some of the largest habitat impacts, it isn’t their scarcity that makes the encounter so rare.

For being described as a potato with wings, the endangered seabird is shockingly fast–up to 100 miles per hour–and elusive. In fact, when training to monitor for marbled murrelets in the wee hours of the morning when the birds are most active in the forest, Sempervirens Fund’s Natural Resource Manager Beatrix Jiménez-Helsley says monitors are not supposed to sit or even lean on anything so they can be most alert for any potential sounds of wing beats or calls because the birds themselves are usually too fast and too well-camouflaged to be seen.

So how can we monitor for the presence of these endangered and secretive birds to protect and support the habitat they need?

Monitoring Marbled Murrelets

Considering how difficult marbled murrelets are to see in the redwood forest, Beatrix and Alex designed a survey to monitor marbled murrelets utilizing two different approaches to gather information.

First, acoustic recording units (ARUs) would be placed along strategically selected flyways—rivers and creeks murrelets follow from the sea—in the forest. The ARUs can be set to record sounds around sunrise and sunset when marbled murrelets are most active in the forest. The recordings can help confirm if marbled murrelets were at a location and narrow down the most promising spots for more in-depth monitoring.

Second, Alex will visit each site once a month throughout nesting season, standing for several hours through sunrises and sunsets hoping to catch a potato-like glimpse below the canopy or hear a boomerang—like whoosh of a wingbeat indicating a nest is nearby. As Beatrix explains, a marbled murrelet flying below the canopy is more exposed to predators, so something has to be worth taking the risk—like caring for offspring.

Beatrix Jiménez-Helsley (left) and Alex Rinkert (right) survey the forest for ideal marbled murrelet monitoring locations, by Orenda Randuch.

Approaches to Monitoring Mysterious Marbled Murrelets

Acoustic Recording Units (ARUs)

What: records audio
When: scheduled around sunrise and sunset, April-August
Where: 5 “suitable habitat” locations
How: software can parse likely “keer” call and wingbeat detections for researchers

In-Person Monitoring

What: watches and listens
When: once a month, near sunrise and sunset, April-August
Where: 5 “suitable habitat” locations
How: can verify nesting behavior and possibly location

photos by Orenda Randuch

The team appears miniscule compared to the fluffy basal sprouting of the large redwood trees above that offer suitable nesting habitat for endangered marbled murrelets, by Orenda Randuch.

photo by Orenda Randuch

Struggling in the Santa Cruz Mountains

Like the redwood forests they rely on for their reproduction, this is the southernmost end of marbled murrelets' range where they face the brunt of climate change effects like warming temperatures, droughts, and increasingly severe and frequent fires. In 2020 alone, it was estimated that 50% of marbled murrelet’s suitable habitat in the region was lost due to the CZU Fire.

Compounding the challenges, depending on two different types of habitat—ocean and forest—means marbled murrelets are threatened by climate impacts on both fronts. The Santa Cruz mountains marbled murrelets are also close to major metropolitan areas and farther from federal forest lands and the protections that come with them. But Portia, Laird, Alex, and Beatrix actively participate in a collaborative marbled murrelet research network striving to pool data and resources across agencies and landowners in this especially challenging southernmost habitat region in the Santa Cruz mountains, officially called Zone 6 by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

As stewards of several thousands acres of protected redwood forests and lands in the Santa Cruz mountains, Sempervirens Fund actively monitors for marbled murrelets in suitable habitat areas. Last year, marbled murrelets were detected at 3 out of 5 monitoring locations which was encouraging after concerns nesting habitat loss from the 2020 CZU Fire could be a potential final blow to the struggling species in Zone 6.

We hope more encouraging findings will result from this year’s marbled murrelet monitoring.

What's Next

Hundreds of hours of audio recordings from the ARUs are being parsed with software by Conservation Metrics Inc. to help narrow down sounds specific to marbled murrelets like their signature “keer” call and their wingbeats. Alex says this data can be used to verify his in-person monitoring findings and provide daily comparisons for his monthly visual findings. Once the analysis is finalized, Alex and Beatrix will share their results with Portia, Laird, and the rest of the Zone 6 marbled murrelet monitoring network to help inform our regional understanding of how the sensitive and secretive species is faring at the end of its range.

Stay tuned for the monitoring results in Part 2 of this story. In the meantime, learn how you can help support struggling endangered marbled murrelets in the Santa Cruz mountains.

A spectogram of a marbled murrelet call from an ARU, by Conservation Metrics International

How You Can Help

While we may not all be able to stand alert for hours monitoring for speeding potatoes in waning light, we can all play a part in protecting this endangered seabird in the redwood forest.

1. Know Your Marbled Murrelet

If you think you see a marbled murrelet, please notify a park official so they can confirm and follow the appropriate procedure.

Learn More

2. Be Crumb Clean

Marbled murrelet eggs can fall prey to corvids like jays, ravens, and crows, which tend to follow human presence in hopes of crumbs. Watch a video to learn how to be crumb clean and help prepare your parks for nesting.

Watch the Video

3. Support Stewardship

This marbled murrelet monitoring work was made possible by a grant from the Arthur L. & Elaine V. Johnson Foundation. You can support more stewardship work like this to monitor, restore, and care for the redwood forest and its species by making a donation.

Donate Now

The post Close Encounter: Monitoring Marbled Murrelets appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

Impact of climate on redwoods by Ink Dwell studio

The Impacts of Climate on Redwoods: Part 4

Cut by deep valleys, cooled by the sea breeze, and draped in fog, the Santa Cruz mountains are a southern stronghold for California’s coast redwoods. The range’s oldest trees have withstood nearly two millennia of drought, floods, winds, fires, earthquakes, and changes made by the area’s human residents.

In the final part of the Redwoods and Climate series by Julia Busiek, Sempervirens Fund explores how Earth’s constantly changing climate shaped redwoods over millions of years, how human-caused climate change is affecting redwoods today, and what the future holds for the iconic forests of the Santa Cruz mountains.

Read Part 1

Living in a Changed Climate

The past few years have been a climate wake-up call for people who live, work, and play in the Santa Cruz mountains. Residents have felt uncertainty and terror as summer skies have filled with smoke for weeks on end. This fear and devastation reached new heights in the 2020 CZU fires, which burned over 85,000 acres in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. That fire raged amidst the three driest years on record statewide, which were capped by a record-breaking heat wave that seared the whole state in September 2022. In December, a switch seemed to flip: by one count, California has since been hit by at least 14 atmospheric rivers this winter, a seemingly constant stream of storms that have breached levees, smashed rainfall records, flooded homes and businesses, and washed out roads and trails throughout the Santa Cruz mountains.

“It feels like we’re really living in a changed climate now,” says Laura McLendon, director of land conservation for Sempervirens Fund. “A decade ago, climate change still felt like something off in the future that we were planning to prevent. Whereas now, we know we can’t stop it, so we’ve shifted our mindset to adapt around these changes.”

Climate Forecast for Redwoods illustration, by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studio

To respond to the rising threats to redwoods, and the natural and human communities that share their habitat throughout the region, Sempervirens Fund is sharpening its conservation strategy to focus more squarely on climate resiliency and redwood survival. In its recently published Climate Action Plan, the organization explains how the region’s redwoods might respond to the best available predictions for climate change to come: deeper droughts and rising temperatures are already causing trees physiological stress, slowing their growth, and making them more vulnerable to disease, disturbance, and fire. As for precipitation, some climate models predict longer annual dry spells and more powerful winter storms. That could mean more flooding, which might wash away the roots of heat- and drought-stressed trees, and less-reliable water availability throughout the growing season.

Since 1900, Sempervirens Fund has protected 36,000 acres of threatened redwoods throughout the Santa Cruz mountains. Now, McLendon says, the organization is doubling down on efforts to ensure that those protected forests have the best shot at withstanding the changes to come, while effectively prioritizing conservation opportunities for the thousands of acres that remain vulnerable throughout the region.

What do those commitments mean in practice? And what data and research are available to guide decision-makers at Sempervirens Fund and their partners throughout the region?

“Water is this species’ Achilles’ heel.”

Redwoods are a remarkably resilient species. Their thick, spongy bark insulates the wood within from flames, and they harbor the rare ability to resprout limbs and leaves after fire. The trees also secrete chemicals that resist insects, fungus, and rot. These are a few of the characteristics that can keep an individual redwood in the Santa Cruz mountains standing—and even gaining mass—for well over a thousand years, while generations of Douglas firs, oaks, and bay laurels grow up and die off.

But there’s a reason it’s hard to find redwoods more than fifty miles inland from the relatively wet, temperate coast of Northern and Central California. As Anthony Ambrose, a redwood ecologist with the forest research nonprofit, the Marmot Society, said in Part 2 of this series, “Water is this species’ Achilles’ heel.”

So, perhaps it’s no surprise that recent research reveals the toll that drought has taken on California’s redwoods in the recent past. In a 2022 study published in Forest Ecology and Management, Cal Poly Humboldt redwood ecologist Steve Sillett measured the recent growth rates of 235 trees in 45 groves, scattered evenly across the species’ range. (Read more here about how Sillett and his coauthors gathered all this data, and how his colleague Allison Carroll finally cracked the mystery of reading redwood tree rings for information about their past growth.) Then they rounded up data on three climate variables across each of the 45 sites: rainfall, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature. Next, they combined those three variables to calculate a fourth: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index, or SPEI. This methodology, developed by Spanish climate scientists between 2010 and 2014, essentially describes the relative severity of drought conditions at a given site and time, compared to historical baseline conditions.

The researchers determined that this fourth variable, SPEI, was most closely correlated with changes in redwood growth rates, and that trees further south in the range responded more drastically—that is, grew less biomass—during droughts than trees further north. “Sequoia trees north of 40° were least sensitive to drought, producing similar biomass annually during dry and wet years, whereas trees farther south produced less biomass during individual drought years,” they found. It wasn’t until the fourth year of the drought that gripped California from 2011-2015 that forests north of 40°—roughly the Mendocino/Humboldt county line—lost much momentum. And after two years of closer-to-normal rainfall, most of these northern forests returned to their expected growth rates.

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studio

But south of Humboldt, researchers found that redwoods’ growth rates were more closely correlated with drought throughout the growing season. Forests in Mendocino, Sonoma, and throughout most of the Bay Area rebounded once the rains returned in 2016. But south of 37°, just about the latitude of Santa Cruz, trees didn’t seem to rebound from the drought, even in the historically rainy winter of 2017. “This is our wake-up call for redwoods at the southern end of their range,” said McLendon. “At a time when we need more redwoods growing bigger, faster—for their own health and also to maximize carbon storage—they are lagging, at best, and that’s troubling. We needed new strategies to protect redwoods, but as importantly, we needed to think about how to actively manage redwood forests to improve their growth and long-term survival.”

“We needed to think about how to actively manage redwood forests to improve their growth and long-term survival.”

—Laura McLendon, Director of Land Conservation

Deciding What To Save

The first priority in Sempervirens Fund’s Climate Action Plan is to protect land for redwoods to survive now and thrive in the long run. But as climate conditions rapidly shift throughout the region, how does the organization know that the lands it’s protecting today will still be able to support redwoods in the future?

Part 1 of this series explored how the climate models issued by authorities like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are too coarse to capture the abrupt changes in temperature and moisture from coast to inland that define the redwood range. In global climate models, “one pixel—one data point—is like 50 kilometers wide,” said Miguel Fernandez, a researcher with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. That’s roughly the same width as the entire range of the redwoods from west to east, meaning the best global models we have basically blink and miss the great variety that makes up the redwood ecosystem.

by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell Studio

In a 2015 paper, Fernandez sought to rectify this resolution problem. He used data from unusually hot or dry years in the past century as the basis for projections of how temperature and moisture might change within the redwood’s present range in the decades to come. His analysis zoomed way in from the scale of global climate models, splitting the redwoods’ present-day range into 800-meter pixels. Under the likeliest global climate scenarios for the middle of the century, Fernandez’s models showed that, by mid-century, the range of suitable habitat for redwoods could contract by 50 percent at its southern end, “with no suitable bioclimate remaining south of San Francisco Bay.” Fernandez’s research garnered lots of headlines when it was published (“Future coastal climate not cool for redwood forests”) and remains one of the few scientific studies that have ventured specific predictions about how predicted climate changes at the 50-kilometer scale translate to conditions we might start to see in the forests we know and love in the years to come.

Another factor that complicates the effort to predict how redwood habitat will shift in the future: the species’ range is defined by not only an overall sharp temperature and moisture gradient between the coastal and inland edges of its overall range, but also by the sort of abrupt, mountainous topography that makes for a great variety of microclimates and big differences in water availability over very short distances. “One challenge to that coarse-resolution data is the fact that conditions can vary a lot, even within an 800-by-800-meter pixel,” says Emily Francis, a research assistant professor of biology at the University of New Mexico. And since redwoods tend to grow only in areas where they get moisture year-round—whether from rainfall, fog, or perennial creeks and springs—even the relatively detailed 800-meter pixels Fernandez used to analyze the species’ range can’t capture enough detail to represent this complexity. (Francis notes that 800-meter pixels are a fairly standard size for researchers analyzing vegetation patterns across a broad landscape.)

So, Francis led a series of studies that attempted to account for the variations in redwood habitat suitability produced by hyper-local gradients in moisture availability, temperature, and fog. Francis and her coauthors gathered data across 86,000 acres in three well-loved redwood forests: Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, and Jackson State Demonstration Forest in Mendocino County. They consulted existing maps and data on species occurrence and climate for these forests, but couldn’t find anything detailed enough to represent the true diversity of a patch of redwood habitat. So, they turned to emerging imaging technology to create maps of their own.

Sunset behind a blanket of fog below a forested ridge at Castle Rock State Park, by 7Roots Creative

Francis commissioned the Global Airborne Observatory (GAO), a plane loaded with what its operators call “the most advanced mapping technology operating in the civil sector today.” Flying low transects over each forest, the plane gathered data through two different instruments: a Visible-to-Shortwave Imaging Spectrometer (VSWIR) and a dual-channel LiDAR sensor. The LiDAR sensor shoots laser beams at the surface, which can both perceive and see through vegetation to piece together a high-resolution topographic map.

The imaging spectrometer, Francis explains, works something like a camera: “Your iPhone camera will show you the light an object is reflecting in the visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.” What our camera rolls show as blue, red, green, and yellow all correspond to different wavelengths of light; the typical human eye can detect wavelengths between 380 and 700 nanometers. An imaging spectrometer captures those wavelengths, but also near-infrared light (wavelengths from 800 to 2,500 nm) and shortwave infrared (wavelengths between 1,100 and 3,000 nanometers). “Those parts are parts of the spectrum where plant species express a lot of variability, depending on their leaf chemistry,” Francis explains. In other words, each species in the forest has its own “spectral” signature: a unique pattern of reflectance across the electromagnetic spectrum. The imaging spectrometer can detect these signatures for individual trees.

The various shades of trees in a forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains, photo by Ian Bornarth.

But the study wasn’t all laser beams and aeronautics. To “train” her data-generated maps to know what species reflects what wavelength, Francis headed out on a few good, old-fashioned site visits. In the forests, she marked the precise locations of over 600 trees, about half of which were redwoods, across the three study sites. She then fed that information back into the model, to correlate each species of tree to its signature wavelength across the entire study area. Then, she compared maps generated by the model to the data she had gathered in the field, assessing how accurately the model labeled the pixels she knew contained redwoods. “The overall accuracy at Big Basin was 98%, at Muir Woods, it was 96%, and at Jackson, it was 90%,” Francis says. (She suspects the accuracy at Jackson is lower because, with its recent history of logging, its trees tend to be smaller. So, the odds of a “mixed pixel,” containing two or more species, are higher.)

Altogether, Francis’s methods proved that it’s possible to efficiently generate maps of redwood forests across a broad area at an unprecedented level of detail: compared to the 800-meter standard for vegetation and downscaled climate modeling data, Francis’s maps offer a pixel size of just ten meters. “Our resulting high-resolution mapping approach will facilitate improved research, conservation, and management of redwood trees in California,” Francis and her coauthors concluded in a 2019 paper about the map-generating process.

But the species occurrence maps themselves only go so far to help resource managers understand the specific conditions in each grove that make some areas more suitable to redwoods than others. So, in a subsequent paper, published in 2020 in the journal Ecography, Francis layered in a bunch of existing data on fog, precipitation, and soil type, with maps of topography generated from the GAO—including the distance each identified redwood stood from a stream, and the average amount of sunlight that hits a particular spot, based on its aspect and slope. “The goal was to develop new maps of habitat suitability,” which is basically the likelihood that a redwood will be able to survive at all stages of its life cycle in a given spot, “and use them to try to test the hypothesis that habitat suitability varies at finer spatial scales” than most current analyses allow for, Francis says.

“The analysis we did suggests that variation in access to moisture, even across tens of meters, does influence the distribution of redwoods,” Francis says. The results weren’t exactly a surprise: “That’s probably pretty easy to infer if you’ve ever gone on a hike in a redwood forest. I think most people would notice that redwoods grow better closer to streams than up on ridges. But with this study, we had a very large data set to quantify that effect in ways that hadn’t been possible before because that high-resolution data wasn’t available.”

Redwood roots in McCormick Creek at Camp Jones Gulch, photo by Orenda Randuch.

As to why that’s useful, Francis mentioned the headline-grabbing conclusion from Fernandez’s 2015 study: “Using 800-meter resolution data, they found that, by the year 2030, areas south of San Francisco were most likely to become unsuitable habitat for redwoods. That includes all of Big Basin,” Francis says. Her findings suggest that, with adequately detailed data, resource managers can identify pockets of habitat, say, a cool nook down in a creek bed, where redwoods can continue to thrive, even if their neighbors on a sunny ridge nearby wither in the heat or burn away. For organizations like Sempervirens Fund, “the results suggest that it’s still worth it to invest in those areas that look like they might become unsuitable at lower resolution, because they might have these areas, called microrefugia, that actually are great habitat still.”

And Francis contends that there’s plenty of utility in the coarser data that most resource managers have access to. “These lower-resolution analyses can better cover the entire redwood distribution and tell us at a broad scale where climate is becoming unfavorable for redwoods,” she says. “That’s definitely useful information for considering how to manage redwood forests for climate change, and our study doesn’t do that.” Her 2020 study also didn’t attempt any specific predictions about how the present-day habitat suitability she’d mapped could change in the coming decades. “I do think it’s possible, and that’s definitely the next step here,” she says. “But there is a step of translating the variables that are output from a climate model, like temperature and precipitation, into the variables that we know are important to redwoods, like moisture availability, which depends on things like fog and topography.”

Land Team members monitor a protected property, photo by Russell Ferretti-Hoyle.

Back in 2013, Sempervirens Fund developed what it calls the Conceptual Area Protection Plan, or CAPP. This is a digital application that draws on a wide range of geospatial data, including a parcel’s biodiversity, proximity to other protected lands, forest size and condition, and watershed integrity, to prioritize opportunities for land protection and stewardship.

McLendon says Sempervirens Fund continues to update its CAPP with new data, including a recently released database from The Nature Conservancy that identifies locations estimated to harbor the greatest resilience to climate change. McLendon says the CAPP is a useful tool to evaluate potential land conservation opportunities before a site visit and to help maintain a list of priority properties that the organization hopes to protect. But data alone is only part of the story.

“We weigh the data with: What are the practical opportunities that we actually have? We may identify a property as a high conservation priority, but what if the landowner doesn’t want to sell? That’s why we put a lot of effort into cultivating relationships with landowners in the region, so, if and when they decide to sell, they come to us first.”

Forest Stewardship For A Changing Climate

“A lot of our project prioritization, both in acquisition and stewardship, has really shifted since the 2020 CZU wildfires,” McLendon says. She’s encouraged by the ubiquitous sight of redwoods that survived and are resprouting with new growth: “It’s definitely a forest in recovery, but it’s a forest system forever changed,” McLendon says.

Executive Director Sara Barth and Director of Land Conservation Laura McLendon with the redwood tree called "Father of the Forest" in Big Basin Redwoods State Park on September 10, 2020—just weeks after the CZU Fire— photo by Ian Bornarth, and the "Father of the Forest" on April 4, 2023, photo by Orenda Randuch.

Before the fire, land managers throughout the region recognized that many of its forests were choked with flammable debris after more than a hundred years of routine fire suppression, and a legacy of clear-cut logging left vast swathes of dense, crowded forests. But resources for forest management have long been inadequate: In Part 3 of this series, Sempervirens Fund Executive Director Sara Barth explained how, prior to 2020, California State Parks’ controlled burn program at Big Basin was “relatively aggressive” and “way beyond the average level for state parks, and for most other landowners in the region.” Those areas that they’d managed to treat with low-intensity fire seem to have fared better during the big blaze than areas that hadn’t burned, Barth says. But owing to cost, regulations, liability, and a narrow and unpredictable window of acceptable weather conditions for setting management fires, the agency only ever managed to burn what Barth calls a “tiny fraction” of the park’s overall area.

The experience of living through the fire—and seeing the profusion of green growth that’s sprouted from blackened stumps—has galvanized Sempervirens Fund and fellow conservationists throughout the state to focus more energy and resources on managing forests to make them more resilient to fire and other disturbances.

“Going forward, we aim to balance more of our work around proactive restoration, including vegetation management activities like removing shrubs and low plants,” McLendon says. And thinning has benefits beyond creating a more fire-resilient forest: It also allows other important species that share redwood habitat a chance to grow and thrive. On a 107-acre property adjacent to Castle Rock State Park that Sempervirens Fund protected in 2010, the organization studied the ecological effects of such thinning treatments and found that “biodiversity on the forest floor was far greater in areas that were thinned, compared to areas that were not treated,” McLendon says. “Not only the number of plants overall, but the number of different species were far greater in areas that were treated, and that’s just what we’ve seen in the first ten years.”

Laura McLendon checks on a complex old-growth near Castle Rock, photo by A. Blanchard.

The organization is also committed to “reintroducing prescribed fire, which is a low-intensity type of fire that adds nutrients to soil, promotes biodiversity, and lowers the likelihood of future catastrophic fire” by consuming debris before it has the chance to build to hazardous levels, McLendon says.

But how do McLendon and her colleagues know—across the 224,000-acre region in the Santa Cruz mountains, where the organization has focused most of its work—what areas are most in need of restoration forestry?

Following the CZU fires, the organization added to its CAPP a new data lens through which to view the landscape, which McLendon calls “stewardship need.” “Post-fire, a lot of areas were shown to have burned at a pretty high severity,” McLendon says. “That’s left just an insane number of dead and dying trees on the ground,” leaving hazardous conditions for future fire seasons. These areas would benefit from either a controlled burn, which would consume the debris, or having crews come through and chip up or haul out the dead and downed trees. The new “stewardship need” data layer combines information on fire severity with considerations like parcel size, access, and slope, to help pinpoint the areas where restoration is both feasible and most urgent.

Fuzzy green growth on redwoods recovering along a creek at San Vicente Redwoods, photo by Teddy Miller.

San Vicente Redwoods: A Living Laboratory

One place where Sempervirens Fund is test-driving its climate-responsive forest stewardship goals is the 9,000-acre San Vicente Redwoods, which the organization and its partners acquired from a cement manufacturing company in 2011. The forest is a vast patchwork of old-growth and previously logged areas, crossed by eight creeks, and home to important and threatened wildlife, including marbled murrelets, coho salmon, and California red-legged frogs, as well as rare plants, such as the Point Reyes horkelia and Santa Cruz manzanita.

In a highly anticipated milestone for local hikers and mountain bikers, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County opened the first seven miles of an eventual 38-mile public trail network at San Vicente Redwoods in December. Meanwhile, since its protection in 2011, Sempervirens Fund, Peninsula Open Space Trust, and Save the Redwoods League have carried on the ambitious work of restoring ecological health and function after over a century of interruption from logging, road building, quarrying, and fire suppression.

Endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout fry at San Vicente Redwoods, by Melisa Cambron Perez.

Stewardship corps members from the Amah Mutsun Land Trust have helped thin dense thickets of debris and, with Cal Fire, have reintroduced controlled fire along Empire Grade Road. To help slow the spread of fast-moving wildfires, crews have cut 11 miles of shaded fuel breaks along roads and ridges and have thinned, or have plans to thin, 500 acres throughout the forest. Last year, the partners planted 23,000 redwood seedlings and 900 Douglas firs in areas burned by the CZU fires. Over three years, Sempervirens Fund helped remove invasive clematis vines from creek beds throughout the property. And in 2021, the organization removed a dam that had long blocked salmon from swimming to spawning grounds upstream. Less than a year later, in September 2022, scientists documented the first-ever coho salmon, a federally endangered species, above the former site of the dam.

All these projects support the overall goal at San Vicente of protecting and enhancing existing old growth, while restoring what McLendon calls “old-growth conditions” to previously logged areas of the forest. But what are those conditions, and why the focus on old growth for climate-conscious restoration?

For one thing, older redwoods are more resilient than younger trees to the kinds of challenges the forests will face in a warmer future: more fire, wind, storms, and flooding, McLendon explains. The recently published research from Cal Poly Humboldt redwoods expert Steve Sillett and his coauthors also finds that older redwoods foster more biodiversity than younger ones, and produce more decay-resistant heartwood, which makes them more efficient at storing carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere to contribute to global warming. And, unlike most other tree species, whose growth tends to slow as they age, redwoods keep adding enormous—and increasing—amounts of wood as they age.

“When it comes to carbon storage potential, there is no other tree that does it as well as an old-growth redwood,” McLendon says, echoing the consequential findings of groundbreaking research from Sillett’s lab that were published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management in 2020. In their 2022 study on redwood growth efficiency, Sillett and his coauthors attribute some of the difference in carbon storage capacity between primary (old-growth) and secondary (previously logged) forests to chemical changes throughout a redwood’s lifespan. Wood extracted from trees growing in primary forests was found to have three times more fungus- and pest-resistant chemicals than trees in secondary forests. As a result, older trees add wood more slowly than younger trees, as they shift the balance of their energy from growth to longevity.

A tree core sample, by Vanessa Bertozzi.

“The decay resistance of heartwood may increase during Sequoia development with profound implications for management of non-timber values, especially carbon sequestration and biodiversity,” researchers wrote. In other words, since older trees resist decay better than younger trees, old-growth groves are a better bet for long-term carbon storage. “Its potential to store the most carbon per acre of any forest type in the world is why we elevate the protection of old-growth redwoods,” says McLendon.

As for biodiversity, older trees are more structurally complex than younger ones: They’ve had time to grow limbs that are themselves the size of mature trees, and develop the massive, multi-layered crowns that are home to a whole strange community of plants and animals that thrive hundreds of feet above the forest floor: lichens, ferns, shrubs, berry bushes, heath, and even Douglas firs and pines.

illustration by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell.

Yet today, just 5% of remaining redwoods are in stands that have never been logged. (Of the 10,000 acres of old growth in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about a thousand acres are unprotected—and these thousand acres are Sempervirens Fund’s highest priority for protection in the region.) If left to their own devices, most of the other 95% might eventually regain some of these old-growth characteristics, but that process could take hundreds of years. With help from foresters, that process can be sped along, McLendon explains.

Trees with pink ribbon can be removed so the redwood in the center can grow faster, by Neal Sharma

The idea is to pick a few trees in each grove of previously logged forests and designate them as what McLendon calls “candidate old-growth” trees. Those trees get to stay and keep growing thicker bark, more resistant heartwood, and bigger arms to support more biodiversity in the forest canopy, while many of the surrounding redwoods may be cut down for use as commercial timber, a source of revenue to fund ongoing forest restoration and management. In their 2022 article, Sillett and his co-authors describe this style of restoration forestry as the Potential Elder Tree model, and stress that it could have benefits for managed forests of all types, as old-growth forests are in decline globally. “Promoting and retaining at least a few large trees per hectare can make substantial contributions to forest biodiversity,” they argue. This sort of selective harvest can generate income from timber sales that can be reinvested in forest restoration. And it’s been shown to have huge ecological payoffs: “Not surprisingly, when you do take out some of the competing trees, the ones you leave behind get bigger, faster,” McLendon explains.

“The strategy we’re pursuing at San Vicente Redwoods and many other places where we work is not only to protect those existing groves, but to knit them together through restoration practices by encouraging acceleration of growth in second-growth forests,” McLendon says. “The goal is to have larger continuous old-growth stands. It’ll take a few generations to get there, obviously, but when we’re thinking about massive climate systems and trees with massive lifespans, we think long-term.”

A Plan For Urgent Action To Save Redwoods

All told, the threats facing the region’s redwoods—and the natural and human communities that share their habitat—are daunting, says Sara Barth. “But I know how hard we’re all working to help this species endure, and I’ve seen the progress we’ve already made.” Barth says that the 36,000 acres of forest that generations of Sempervirens Fund supporters have helped protect and restore is just one measure of that progress. So is the network of nonprofits, government agencies, companies, and experts that Sempervirens Fund partners with, and the scientists whose findings are essential to understanding the complex interactions among climate, ecology, and biology that have shaped the forests we know today.

Still, Barth says that everyone who cares about the future of redwoods should be hearing alarm bells right now. The urgent need for action and investment on an unprecedented scale is why Sempervirens Fund is organizing its future work around three ambitious new goals. First, the organization will accelerate its purchasing of land for permanent conservation and protect 7,000 more acres of climate-resilient redwood forests by 2030. Second, through restoration and management, it aims to boost the ability of forests throughout the region to store carbon, capturing an additional 1.1 metric tons of carbon by 2050 that would otherwise contribute to global warming. Finally, Sempervirens Fund is pursuing partnerships and policies to ensure that the State of California meets its goal of protecting 30% of the state by 2030 (up from 24% protected today).

Redwood leaves remove carbon from the air and store it in the tree's wood, by Canopy Dynamics

To help reach these goals, Barth says, Sempervirens Fund is fighting for policies that support climate resilience. The organization advocated for $54 billion in state funding in 2022 to support conservation and protect public lands, parks, and coastline, statewide. And it’s working with lawmakers in Sacramento to restore the $1.3 billion for climate projects that was cut in Governor Newsom’s 2023 budget proposal. Public funding—local, state, and federal—will be key to preparing the state’s forests to withstand climate change. Policy working its way through the California Legislature would finally direct state agencies to prioritize acquisition of conserved lands, beginning in the Santa Cruz mountains—an approach not seen from state conservation agencies for much of the last decade.

But Barth says the most important factor in the organization’s success is the growing community of people who feel a personal connection to the region’s redwoods, and who have given their time, skills, and resources to Sempervirens Fund in return.

“So many of our supporters are keyed in to what’s happening with the region’s forests, and they’re the strongest force behind our goals and plans for the future,” says Barth. “The willingness and concern from our supporters and community to step up and meet this moment are what give me the most hope for the future.”

“The willingness and concern from our supporters and community to step up and meet this moment are what give me the most hope for the future.”

—Sara Barth, Executive Director

Read Part 3

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