photo by Orenda Randuch

Resetting Redwoods

A century and a half ago, as California’s economy expanded, settlers and industrialists began moving into the Santa Cruz Mountains and deciding what the redwood forests were for. Imagine seeing for the first time the dense understory of sky-scraping titans shading young redwoods in a diverse community that nourished wildlife and cooled creeks teeming with Coho-salmon. Navigating the untouched forest proved difficult and dangerous, but within the forests’ intricate ecosystem these newcomers also saw the potential to use the forest to grow cities like San Francisco and to establish new businesses, institutions, and more.

In an act of hubris, they forcibly carved roads into hillsides that gave their equipment access to each tree and stream, disrupting what had been thriving for thousands of millennia. Today, giant stumps, evenly-aged forests, and Coho-less creeks are the familiar scars of the once decimated forests. These crossings and structures continue to redirect water and sediment today; a large reason why in many places, protection alone cannot undo that damage. Restoring impacted forests begins by removing infrastructure designed for short-term extraction in mind.

Thanks to you, we steward more than 12,000 acres of protected land that we work to restore to nature for all of us.

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–return to nature this year.

Removing Roads Less Traveled

While not all of the forests we protect have unsafe buildings and materials on them, nearly all of them have roads. Many were designed for short-term industrial uses rather than long-term stability on steep terrain. Some continue to provide necessary access to the forest for stewardship, wildlife monitoring, and emergency crews like firefighters. But unmaintained roads can add to the erosion of mountainsides, fragile after the CZU Fire and the extreme winter storms that followed.

With fewer plants to help hold soil in place, dirt roads can wash out, taking away the soil the recovering forest needs, and muddying critical water sources we and wildlife need. With your support, we were able to “rock” crucial access roads—establishing beds of crushed gravel—and decommission unnecessary roads to reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, and give the space back to the forest.

See Orenda Randuch’s photos before and after the removal of an unused road at the Lompico Headwaters you protected in 2006.

Rooting Out Invasive Species

Infrastructure isn’t the only thing humans brought into the redwoods. As people across the country and globe came to the Santa Cruz mountains, plants and creatures came with them. Invasive plants like French, Scotch, and Italian broom took root in places without pests and pathogens equipped to naturally keep them in check. A single plant, such as old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba), can quickly cover ground in the forest and strangle redwood trees. Invasive plants can be a double-edged sword to the heart of the forest as they go up the canopy. Not only can they grow quickly without natural checks—crowding out the native plants the redwood forest and its creatures rely upon—they are also less fire-resilient—making their big growth a big pile of fuel for a wildfire.

A seemingly harmless sounding species, periwinkle (Vinca major), is particularly difficult to remove because any root left in the soil will regenerate into new plants. Thanks to you, invasive periwinkle and French broom removal projects began in the summer of 2024 in the redwood forest you protected at Lompico Headwaters. In 2025 and beyond, the work has continued as a returning project so native plants can re-establish themselves on the forest floor. Your support allows us to remove invasive plants, their deep roots and copious seeds, so these invaded patches do not become a persistent source of dry, flashy fuel in the hotter, drier years predicted to come.

See our Stewardship Team's photos before and after work to remove a patch of periwinkle from the forest by hand.

Returning Redwoods to Nature and Resilience

The truth is: redwood forests still bear the scars of a history marked by profoundly destructive human intervention. They have endured axes and bulldozers, but also lingering barriers like dams, buildings, and invasive species. What has changed is how we act now. Stewardship, for us, is the ongoing work of carefully and humbly understanding how to support forests toward what they once were, and what they still have the potential to become.

Protecting our last remaining redwood forests from further development is a crucial first step. By reducing human impacts left on the land, natural systems regain the capacity to respond, adapt, and recover. Together, we will continue to anchor broader efforts to renew watersheds, support resilient forests, and accelerate the collective well-being of ecosystems that redwoods are capable of achieving. With your help, our forests will be resilient and strong, able to support wildlife, clean water, fresh air, cooler temperatures, and healthy communities for generations to come.

The post A Stewardship Story: Return to Nature appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

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.

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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.

Habitats

Just three miles from the coast, Año Nuevo Vista’s 41 acres include a mosaic of habitat types from redwood forest to quickly disappearing maritime chaparral. Atop its ridges are the chalks: a white sandy soil more specifically categorized as “Maymen rock outcrop complex” or “rough broken land.” Here, resilient fire-adapted chaparral species like knobcone pines, chinquapin, scrub oaks, and bush poppies thrive. Despite its unstable, low nutrient soil, the chalks support several rare plants that can’t be found anywhere else. The chalks are the only known habitat for the extremely rare and critically-imperiled Ohlone manzanita and Schreiber's manzanita and home to one of only five stands of Monterey pine trees in the world. Below the chalks’ quick-draining soils, healthy second-growth redwood forest and coast live oaks sprout new growth recovering from the 2020 CZU Fire. Año Nuevo Vista’s diversity of habitat types supports many plants and wildlife within its borders and throughout the watershed.

photo by Orenda Randuch

photo by Orenda Randuch

Water

The headwaters of Old Woman’s Creek spring from Año Nuevo Vista. Running through the property, Old Woman’s Creek supplies water for thirsty forests and wildlife at Año Nuevo Vista and beyond. Old Woman’s Creek feeds into Gazos Creek, a critical habitat and watershed, as well as the Pacific Ocean.

Wildlife

Endangered marbled murrelets, coho salmon, and steelhead trout rely on the Gazos Creek watershed’s route from the ocean to reproduce in the redwood forest. Marbled murrelets nest among old-growth trees while coho and steelhead spawn in creeks amongst their roots. From the redwoods to the ridges, pumas are known to traverse their large ranges along the less populated chalks, leaving their scratches in the warm sand where western fence lizards and rattlesnakes can thrive.

photo by Orenda Randuch

photo by Ian Bornarth

Connections

Año Nuevo Vista is located within the largest remaining intact habitat patch in the Santa Cruz mountains. Nestled between Año Nuevo State Park, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, and Butano State Park, it’s just one parcel away from Big Basin to the east and shares a border with protected Skylark Ranch to the south. Año Nuevo Vista is key to connecting protected habitats for wildlife and protected park lands for people. Landscapes fragmented by human development impact the health of forests, watersheds, and wildlife. By protecting Año Nuevo Vista’s 41 acres, we can improve connectivity between 62,000 acres of protected land.

Stewardship

If protected with your support, we can steward Año Nuevo Vista to help restore it from human impacts and make it more resilient for increased wildfires and climate change threats. After the 2020 CZU Fire killed many trees and plants, Año Nuevo Vista’s fragile soils are eroding more quickly and washing into the crucial Gazos Creek watershed. By repairing roads, improving drainage and planting native plants, endangered plants and wildlife will benefit. Cameras will be installed to monitor wildlife’s use and habitat needs. Some areas burned severely in the fire and by removing standing dead trees, fast growing invasive plants, and creating a fire break in a key location, the speed and severity of fires can be decreased—better protecting the forest’s resilience and opportunities for firefighters to manage blazes. Together, we can protect Año Nuevo Vista and care for its woods, water, and wildlife.

photo by Ian Bornarth

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All photos and video by Orenda Randuch Photography

Notes on Mushroom Identification

Hundreds of fungi are known to exist in the redwoods but there are an estimated 3 million species of fungi on the planet and only about 140,000 of those have been described by science. Even those that have been described are sometimes re-classified, like the mica cap, as we learn more about them. Pictures can’t always give us all of the information needed to properly identify a mushroom, like yellow staining milk caps and southern candy caps which could look similar from above at different stages. Seeing a mushroom from below, like its gills, or inside, like the center of its stipe, can help but sometimes spore color–which can require time or a microscope–are needed to be sure, Maya notes.

Mushroom cap

Mushroom cap and stipe shape

Mushroom stipe base and gills

Mushroom stipe center

What is a Mushroom?

You may think of mushrooms as food, medicine, or psychedelics but to fungi mushrooms are reproductive organs. When you consume a mushroom, you are only consuming the fruiting body of a much larger organism. “The body of the fungus is mycelium, which is a filamentous network made up of microscopic strands called hyphae,” Maya explains. A mushroom’s role is to share its genetic information to create the next generation. The reason we see mushrooms while most of the fungus is underneath the soil, is because a mushroom rises up to where it can spread its spores on the wind or with the help of passersby.

Brown Cup Mushroom

Brown cup mushrooms (Peziza arvernensis), like these found recycling wood to enrich the soil at San Vicente Redwoods, release spores from the smooth inner surface of their cup in a delicate smoke-like wisp after its been triggered by touch or a burst of air. Maya suggests blowing on a cup mushroom with a long stream of air to see its spores dance gently away. It takes billions of spores to be visible to the human eye, Maya shares, each one of those spores contains genetic information to create the next generation of fungi.

Brown cup mushrooms

Spore Color

The color of spores can be a helpful way to confirm the identity of mushrooms like Pholiota velaglutinosa that have look-alikes with similar habitats like other fungi in the Pholiota family. Spores are tiny but a mushroom’s gills are designed to pack as many in as possible. The best way to see a mushroom’s spore color is to place the mushroom in question on a plain white sheet of paper and covering it with a bowl to see the color of the spores as they collect on the paper, Maya suggests. Pholiota velaglutinosa has brown spores. Another helpful clue for confirming Pholiota velaglutinosa, also known as the slimy-veiled Pholiota, is the thick slimy coat on the reddish brown cap when it's fresh.

Pholiota velaglutinosa mushroom

The Dangers of Decay

While many fungi help to decay wood and dead plant matter–creating space and nutrients for the next generation–a mushroom’s own decay can make it difficult to properly identify. Even past its prime, this large mushroom felt nearly as heavy as the wood it was growing on. But Maya cautions, decay can effect identifying features of mushrooms—some are even known to have their flesh change color when bruised or cut. This specimen is decayed enough that Maya isn’t confident of its identity.

Mushroom specimens too decayed for confident identification

Violet Tooth

Rarely seen in the Santa Cruz mountains or on conifers–trees that make cones–this violet tooth (Trichaptum biforme) was found helpfully breaking down the wood of a burned Douglas-fir at San Vicente Redwoods. It’s violet edge helps differentiate it from the more common turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) but the color can fade as the mushroom ages.

Violet tooth mushroom

Rosy Conk

Another colorful soon to be fan-shaped fungi decomposing a scorched fallen Douglas-fir is the rosy conk (Rhodofomes cajanderi). When young, the rosy conk can be hoof shaped like these. Look closely and you may see what appear to be drops of blood but don’t worry, the reddish droplets are enzymes the mushrooms release.

Rosy conk mushrooms

Mica cap mushroom

Mica Cap

While foraging isn’t permitted in San Vicente Redwoods fragile recovering ecosystem, this common edible mushroom can be found growing in clusters near the stumps, dead trees, and logs that it breaks down from fall into spring throughout the redwood range. Mica cap (Coprinus micaceus, formerly known as Coprinus micaceus until 2001) doesn’t have much flesh but can be used to make flavorful sauces and gravies. One of their easiest identifying features is its deliquescing gills which means they release their spores in an inky liquid.

Copy Caps

Yellow staining milk cap (Lactarius xanthogalactus) can be found growing from southern California to Oregon where these mycorrhizal fungi network with the roots of trees to exchange nutrients and information. But this yellow staining milk cap was seen growing at San Vicente Redwoods where it has a look-alike. Maya explains yellow staining milk cap isn’t edible and can give you a tummy ache while its similar looking cousin southern candy cap (Lactarius rufulus) is edible. Her bonus tip? She likes to place southern candy caps on the dashboard of her car and enjoy their maple syrupy smell as they dry like a natural air freshener before cooking with them. Southern candy caps grow and partner with coast live oaks and so will yellow staining milk caps. Maya says the best way to make sure you don’t have a yellow staining milk cap is to look for their namesake yellow milk-like substance that they lactate.

Southern candy cap mushroom

Southern candy cap mushroom

Yellow staining milk cap mushroom

Yellow staining milk cap mushroom

Confusing these cap mushrooms is a mistake you can certainly survive to regret. However, there are three mushrooms in the Santa Cruz mountains that Maya says it could be possible not to survive misidentifying.

Poisonous Mushrooms and Mistaken Identity

Despite common misconceptions of deadly mushrooms, Maya says you can touch or take the tiniest bite of any mushroom and you’ll be fine. However, the three most common deadly poisonous mushrooms in the Santa Cruz mountains—death cap (Amanita phalloides), deadly galerina (Galerina marginata), and western destroying angel (Amanita ocreata)—can easily be mistaken for other mushrooms and consumed in dangerous amounts.

Destroying Angel

Thankfully, a western destroying angel (Amanita ocreata) can be identified by its white gills, wide bulbous volva (sack) at the base of of its stipe, and tough stipe that is not hollow, Maya explains. A stipe is what us non-mycologists might think of as a stem or stalk. Young western destroying angel mushrooms start out in white egg shapes that look a lot like edible puffball mushrooms. When foraging, Maya highly recommends slicing any puffball mushrooms in half to look for signs of a mushroom growing inside, like a stipe and cap, which could indicate it's actually an “egg” of a young western destroying angel.

Western destroying angel mushroom

Orange Jelly versus Witch’s butter

Orange jelly fungi can look alot like witch’s butter. While both are edible, by most accounts neither is terribly appealing once cooked and Maya advises against eating raw mushrooms. Raw mushrooms can have brown garden slug slime on them which can carry a disease, and all mushrooms contain chitin which–fun fact–gives them their rigidity just like insect and crustacean exoskeletons and can give us tummy troubles. Orange jellies are more orange and less “snotty” than witch’s butter but unless you have them side by side, the easiest way to tell them apart is by what they’re growing on. “A lot of mushroom identification is rotting log identification,” Maya laughs. This orange jelly spot (Dacrymyces chrysospermus) was found growing on a Douglas-fir which makes cones whereas witch’s butter (Tremella aurantia) is a parasitic fungus that grows on false turkey tail fungi on broad-leaved trees like oaks.

Orange spot jelly mushroom

Orange spot jelly mushroom

Witch's butter mushroom

False Turkey Tail
and Sudden Oak Death

Unlike turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), false turkey tail (Stereum hirsutum) never has the solid white pore surface underneath that turkey tail does. But of course, its not always so simple to identify. While false turkey tail is usually seen in fan shapes you might expect of turkey tails, they can also make crust-like formations. False turkey tail is the most common mushroom in the Santa Cruz mountains, Maya says. Unfortunately, each false turkey tail seen growing on an oak or tan oak tree is a sign that the tree might be infected with Sudden Oak Death, she explains. While false turkey tails decompose the wood of trees including those killed by the invasive, quick spreading disease, the number of trees dying adds to the amount of wood that can fuel the next wildfire to more damaging levels. Although Sudden Oak Death can increase the spread of fire, fire can decrease the spread of Sudden Oak Death. Maya says, “good fire dramatically reduces Sudden Oak Death.”

Fire can also support fungi that support the trees and the future.

False turkey tail mushrooms

High severity burn area at San Vicente Redwoods

Fungi and Fire

From the trail, Maya points out how much better the forest fared where techniques based on traditional tending practices like prescribed burns and shaded fuel breaks were done before the CZU Fire tore through San Vicente Redwoods in 2020. “Burning practices that care for the oak trees also tend the fungi under the trees that benefit the oaks too,” she explains.

Mycorrhizal fungi that create a network for exchanging nutrients and information among trees in the forest benefit from low intensity fires like prescribed and cultural burns. Low intensity fires recycle the nutrients from dead branches, leaves and plant material into the soil where their tree partners can access them. Burning off that debris also reduces fuel the next wildfire can burn to grow hotter, faster and more damaging to mycorrhizal fungi’s forest friends.

Less severe burn area at San Vicente Redwoods

Biscogniauxia

Upon first glance, you may think Biscogniauxia is wood charred in a fire, but it is actually a fungus that Maya has only seen post-fire. This possible fire mimicry may just be a coincidence, but to tell whether you are looking at burnt wood or a fungi working to break down wood after a fire, look closely for tiny dots which release spores.

“Fires break down nutrients in the summer, fungi break them down in the winter,” Maya explains.

Biscogniauxia fungi

Coltricia perennis mushrooms

Coltricia Perennis

Although much more could be learned about Coltricia perennis, sometimes called brown funnel polypore, it is known to have a preference for burned areas like San Vicente Redwoods. More than one fungi species currently uses the name Coltricia perennis but they are all different than most other small polypores. Coltricia perennis is ectomycorrhizal and forms helpful connections with coniferous trees in the redwood forest–especially pines–helping them to access nutrients and information rather than decay wood as many small polypores do.

Sulfur Tuft

Colorful sulfur tuft mushrooms (Hypholoma fasciculare) like these yellowish orange ones have been used for dye but Maya advises against using it for cooking. Sulfur tuft can cause what she politely calls “gastrointestinal discomfort”. Like other saprotrophic fungi, sulfur tuft has a crucial role in the forest. It mostly grows on Douglas-fir trees in the Santa Cruz mountains where it breaks down dead, woody debris and returns the nutrients to the soil. After the CZU Fire burned most of San Vicente Redwoods, there is lots of woody debris that would be beneficial to break down before it can become firewood for the next wildfire.

Sulfur tuft mushrooms

Fungi and the Future

The vast amount of woody debris that could fuel the next fire isn’t the only issue fungi can help with at San Vicente Redwoods. Maya shares that oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are being studied at San Vicente Redwoods to see how they can help reduce further impacts from the CZU Fire on the environment. Oyster mushrooms are known for their ability to break many toxins down through their mycelium underground. By breaking down buried logs underground, Maya hopes oyster mushrooms can keep more of the carbon San Vicente’s trees had trapped out of the air. Near the creek, Maya hopes their mycelium, which act as underground sponges helping trees through droughts, can filter toxins from burned homes from washing into San Vicente Creek’s crucial habitat for endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout. Fungi can even break down organic materials in petroleum and are being utilized to help clean up oil spills. However, as fungi help clean the environment around them, heavy metals can concentrate in their mushrooms, so Maya advises not picking mushrooms near a gas station or a road.

Oyster mushrooms

More Mushrooms

Are you eager for more mushrooms?

Join Maya Under the Redwoods

Want to learn more about how fungi offer nature-based solutions for human impacts like floods, fires, and climate change? Join Maya Elson for a free Under the Redwoods webinar on February 27th from 1- 2 pm Pacific.

Take A Hike

You can follow in Maya and Orenda’s footsteps by taking the mâ-rŭs trail to Vista Point and hai-mĭn’ trail back when you visit San Vicente Redwoods to see if you can spot the mushrooms above.

A Few Guidelines

1. Please stay on the trail. Like tree roots, fungal mycelium networks underground can be damaged by our weight above ground.
2. Please do not forage. Foraging is not permitted at San Vicente Redwoods to protect fragile and recovering ecosystems that have already suffered many human impacts.
3. This is not intended to be a foraging guide, and Maya notes the challenges that similar looking fungi species can present even to mycologists in identifying. If you are interested in foraging, please consider reaching out to a professional guide. Maya leads fungi foraging hikes and mycology workshops with Mycopsychology Experiences.

Stay Tuned for Shrooms

Maya and her UC Santa Cruz students are beginning to survey fungi at San Vicente Redwoods. We look forward to finding out about more fungi species at San Vicente Redwoods from the class’ research visits. If you want to be the first to what about more fungi found on properties you help protect and care for, you can sign up for email here.

Fungi Photos

As Maya points out, mushrooms can be very difficult to identify from photos, even for experts. While we worked closely with mycologist and researcher Maya Elson in the field and on this guide to provide you with helpful tips to get to know mushrooms at San Vicente Redwoods, there are many fungi yet to be described by science and ever evolving species. If you think a mushroom above has been misidentified, let us know.

The post Fungi of the Forest: Meet the Mushrooms of San Vicente Redwoods appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

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

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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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Read All News

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

Contact: Matt Shaffer, Sempervirens Fund, 415-609-2750, mshaffer@sempervirens.org
Note to media: Images and maps of San Vicente Redwoods are available for download here.

Redwood and mixed fir seedlings were planted across burned areas of San Vicente Redwoods. Photo: Matt Dolkas/POST.

DAVENPORT, Calif. (Sept. 13, 2023) – Leaders from the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and Sempervirens Fund, who co-own and manage the 8,852 acres of San Vicente Redwoods (SVR), gathered last month with their partners Save the Redwoods League and Land Trust of Santa Cruz County to review their joint progress in advancing restoration of the property that burned completely in the CZU Lightning Complex wildfire of 2020. Their work has aimed both to restore the health of a forest that was heavily logged at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as to build wildfire resilience back into the regional landscape as part of CAL FIRE’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan for San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. The partners’ work on the property has also aimed to benefit adjacent communities through infrastructure improvements and safety measures.

Since early 2022 – 12 years into their unique co-management of this property ‒ the SVR partners have treated more than 820 forested acres, roughly 10% of the property, using a variety of forest restoration techniques including removal of hazard trees along critical infrastructure (like roads and powerlines) and restoration thinning to encourage maturation of redwoods. The partners tended thousands of redwood and mixed fir seedlings planted last year across 270 acres of San Vicente Redwoods to accelerate the regrowth of the forest that burned in the CZU wildfire. Crews also cleared 5.7 miles of roads that had been blocked by aggressive post-CZU understory plant growth, restoring management access to the Coast-Cotoni Ridge.

Crews at SVR are creating nine miles of shaded fuel breaks along Warrenella Road that will help to slow future wildfires and protect nearby communities such as Davenport and Bonny Doon. Warrenella Road runs along a key ridgeline and was used by CAL FIRE to slow the 2009 Lockheed Fire. A total of 8,000 tons of biomass were removed from the forest in related efforts led by the Bonny Doon Fire Safe Council. All were incinerated on-site utilizing air curtain burners provided by CAL FIRE, which significantly reduce the release of both airborne pollutants and sparks ‒ and the risk each carries.

Redwood and mixed fir seedlings were planted across burned areas of San Vicente Redwoods. Photo: Matt Dolkas/POST.

The 2022-23 winter storm season brought an exceptional 75.15 inches of rain and multiple bomb cyclones through the property. Nevertheless, the team ensured that improvements to nine creek crossings on Cal Poly Road held up. These improvements reduced sedimentation along three miles of the environmentally sensitive Scott Creek watershed. Additionally, the driving surface of a bridge over San Vicente Creek, heavily damaged in the CZU fire, was repaired with redwood cut during fuels management efforts and milled on the property.

As a “living laboratory” for forest restoration and natural resource management, SVR hosts 24 researchers from 11 institutions, who are engaged in ongoing studies about the region’s sensitive resources, long-term impacts of and recovery from the CZU fire and the efficacy of restoration techniques. A botanical study revealed nine special status species and four locally rare species across 23 biological hotspots at SVR. These findings will help SVR partners target future restoration activities, like invasive plant management and ecologically focused prescribed burns. With support from the Amah Mutsun Land Trust’s Native Stewards, University of California Santa Cruz and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers also confirmed the presence of rare coho salmon further into the property than ever noted before, swimming through a stream that was reopened to the ocean after a 2021 dam removal.

“Our work at San Vicente Redwoods is driven by both conservation and community-serving goals,” said Walter T. Moore, president of POST. “As we’re able to build wildfire resilience back into the landscape, we’re providing meaningful protections for local communities as well as the greater Santa Cruz Mountains ecosystem.”

SVR partners performed repairs on storm-impacted roads to ensure that Davenport Sanitation District can access critical water infrastructure to support their customers. The partners also installed six new water tanks at three locations on the property to support emergency fire suppression for the region and maintenance operations on the property.

Additionally, the partners have engaged local partners and civic organizations in numerous ways, including hosting trainings for the Sheriff’s search and rescue crews; CAL FIRE chainsaw-use training and certification classes; and hose-laying training for the Bonny Doon volunteer fire-fighting team.

“Despite the CZU fire, San Vicente Redwoods is a case study in the promise of active, science-centered stewardship,” added Sara Barth, executive director of Sempervirens Fund. “We are succeeding, and it would not be possible without our ongoing partnerships, including with CAL FIRE, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust and the many state and regional agencies who are actively supporting and participating in the work.”

The partners built and opened 7.3 miles of hiking, biking and equestrian trails in December 2022, the first of several phases envisioned for the property. To date, more than 5,000 people have registered for a free lifetime pass issued by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County to use the trails at San Vicente Redwoods.

The many types of work happening at SVR are both important and costly. In the past year, the partners and their property manager have secured $3 million in new grants and project-specific donations to ensure that the project continues uninterrupted. The funding sources include CAL FIRE, California Coastal Conservancy, Regional Water Quality Control Board, U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service, Board of Forestry and numerous private and individual donors.

What’s Next at San Vicente Redwoods
In addition to continuing to create shaded fuel breaks and reduce fuels across the property, the partners are preparing for a conservation-focused commercial redwood timber harvest on 205 acres of the working forest section of the property. This innovative timber harvest is aimed at helping the forest recover from the CZU Fire by removing the smallest trees which were most impacted by the fire. By removing these severely damaged smaller redwoods, the remaining larger, healthier redwoods will have more space to thrive and recover from the fire damage. Partners expect these trees will continue to grow around damaged tissues, sequestering more carbon and creating crevices in the bark used by bats and other wildlife.

“Our conservation approach to harvesting is innovative and experimental compared to common practice, where we’re taking out the smallest trees rather than the larger ones,” explained Susan Petrie, senior stewardship project manager at POST. Any revenue generated by the harvest will go back into funding the ongoing restoration work at SVR.

Petrie added, “Even the harvest is part of our living laboratory approach at San Vicente Redwoods. Thanks to a Board of Forestry grant, we are tracking individual fire-damaged trees through the milling process to understand how external fire damage corresponds to internal wood condition. This knowledge will help foresters make more informed decisions about post-fire recovery and tree selection in the future throughout the redwood range.”

The post NEWS: San Vicente Redwoods Progress Report on Wildfire Resilience Restoration Three Years After CZU Wildfire, Amid Continued Risk appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

Tree trunks like matchsticks rise up to surviving and recovering green canopy above the charred marks left by the flames against a bright blue sky at San Vicente Redwoods three years after the CZU Fire

But while many parts of the forest were devastated by the CZU Fire, most of the redwoods will recover, largely because efforts to prepare it for–and with–fire still resulted in better protections for nearby communities and the forest. Shaded fuel breaks created in previous years ​​in partnership with CalFire and the Bonny Doon Fire Safe Council reduced dry brush and understory vegetation that can speed a fire along. These fuel breaks likely decreased the heat and speed of the fire at San Vicente Redwoods as it neared neighborhoods close by.

A photo from 2020 after the CZU Fire could almost be mistaken for a display of autumn colors but few leaves or debris are on the forest floor. A photo in 2023 shows more green canopy above lush, dense green understory growth several feet high on both sides of the road

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Fire Resilience

Rays of sunlight shine through four bright green leaves of a plant rising from the forest floor taking advantage of resources from prescribed burn at San Vicente Redwoods in 2017

Prescribed Burns

Prescribed burns are one of the most effective tools for promoting ecological resilience in the face of wildfire. Prescribed burns consume downed branches and dense understory plants to reduce the fuel available for future approaching wildfires, while also providing numerous benefits to the ecosystem.

A black-tailed deer enjoys the new plant growth and easy movement across the forest floor after a prescribed burn that left the healthy overstory untouched at San Vicente Redwoods in 2017

Strategic Thinning

Some areas are too densely overgrown, from past clear cut logging and decades of fire suppression, to feasibly utilize a prescribed burn. By strategically thinning smaller trees spaced too closely together, more space is created between trees which can slow a fire’s spread as well as allow remaining trees to grow larger and more resilient to fires ahead.

Helping to Eliminate Fuel After A Fire

A green air curtain burner from Cal Fire sits in front of dead standing trees almost as far as the eye can see at San Vicente Redwoods

Air Curtain Burner

Air curtain burners may look like unassuming shipping containers on the outside but on the inside, they're closer to fire containers. A massive fire like CZU leaves lots of fallen and hazardous–threatening to fall–trees in its burn footprint. Trees that could potentially become fuel for the next fire if left behind.

Wood that cannot be salvaged can be safely burned inside a curtain burner which consumes the wood beneath a blanket of air that constantly flows over the top—trapping heat and sparks inside—which allows it to be a safe and efficient way to reduce the abundance of fuel from the fire. Some curtain burners can also create energy from the burning process that can charge batteries or go back into the power grid. While curtain burners have been used around the state, the amount of dead trees left in CZU’s path across the Santa Cruz mountains has created novel conditions where the amount of wood not only exceeds the community and nature’s needs it poses a risk to them both necessitating some of their first use in the region.

Carbonator

Like an air curtain burner, a carbonator safely removes excess wood that could become fuel for a fire, it allows us to mimic fire conditions in multiple ways. Carbonators saves 10% of the biomass it consumes to produce “bio char” which can be used to return nutrients to the soil much as a fire would. The bio char can be repurposed for agricultural needs, providing nutrients for local organic farms.

A carbonator sits behind a large gray pile of bio char, the 10% left behind after burning off the bio mass of dead trees that can be used to return nutrients to the soil mimicking fire

“We are trying to employ tried and true fire and fuel management techniques, but we are also using innovative strategies like curtain burners and carbonators in partnership with CalFire to deal with the novel conditions post-CZU fire to tackle the huge amount of fuel build-up. Curtain burners and carbonators are technologies used around the state but not as much in our region, in that way we are trying to think differently about tackling local issues. At the same time we are helping lead regional discussions about even more innovative solutions: can our curtain burners plug into the grid and actually produce electricity? Are there opportunities for locations or facilities to process the entire region’s biomass? Can we spur more of a local market for the hardwood and biochar?”

- Ian Rowbotham

Beyond Fire: Positive Impacts of Fire Mitigation Strategies

Beyond the immediate advantages for fire prevention and recovery, wildfire mitigation efforts simultaneously help improve forest health by increasing viable habitat and carbon storage as well as improved resilience to climate change. Catastrophic wildfire is devastating to communities, but fire mitigation strategies—including returning fire to the land through cultural and prescribed burns—have the power to heal.

The post Fuel for Fire: Framing Forest Resilience Three Years After the CZU Fire appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.