Budding Hope : Greenery Sprouts Amid Fire-Charred Coastal Vegetation

Eighteen hikers came to the canyons here Saturday to witness the resurrection of wilderness charred three months ago in the worst fire the coastal area has experienced in modern history.

They were the first group of public sightseers that Orange County park officials had allowed to venture into the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park since fire swept through its 2,200 rugged acres Oct. 27, denuding hillsides once thick with coastal sage and turning trees to blackened skeletons.

But the hikers entering the mouth of Laurel Canyon next to busy Laguna Canyon Road immediately saw budding life.

Wildflowers, including wild cucumbers, wild hyacinth, milkmaids, Indian paintbrush and coastal sunflowers, had begun to blossom along the trails through Laurel Canyon. And in some spots, purple needlegrass formed a green patchwork against the brown hillsides. Scott Thomas, a landscape architect who served as a docent on the hike, pointed to emerald green leaves on the uppermost limbs of coast live oaks. Only a few weeks earlier the trees had looked dead, he said. But the thicker bark on the older branches had protected them from being killed by the searing heat.

The limbs of the smaller elderberry trees are still bare. But clusters of leafy shoots sprout from the base of their trunks. These are the beginnings of new trees born from surviving roots below the earth, Thomas said.

“It is unbelievably different now than it was before the fire. But it does give you hope,” said Beverly Kelly, a commercial artist and Laguna Beach resident who intends to document the rebirth of nature on canvas. “There is so much beauty, even in the blackness and char.”

Scientists also are eager to study how plants and wildlife return to the canyons of Laguna Beach, said Orange County Park Ranger Larry Sweet.

“For us this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Sweet said. “This will be the classic living laboratory.”

Although some scientists fear that the intensity of the heat may have destroyed some native plants, Sweet said he was confident that they would survive. Fire always has been part of nature’s cycle in the region, Sweet said, and over the centuries the native plant seeds have adapted.

Flowers and grasses should flourish more plentifully in the wake of the fire, Sweet said, because they are no longer shaded by coastal sage.

“This spring should be one of the best wildflower blooms we ever had,” he said.

Sweet said county park officials had rejected the idea of artificially reseeding any of the wilderness park, although that technique was used in other parts of Laguna Beach to try to prevent erosion and flooding during the winter storms.

“We wanted it (the park) to be the way nature intended,” Sweet said, noting that some of the city’s hydro-seeded slopes have yet to take root, while native shrubs already are making a comeback.

Sweet said the fire will increase the diversity of plants and animals in the wilderness park. “Anytime there is a fire the vegetation comes back more lush,” he said.

But it could take 10 to 20 years, he said, before wildlife in the park will reach the same ecological balance as before the fire.

The images of destruction in the canyon are still powerful. “Look at the prickly pear cactus. It got fried,” said Thomas, referring to a black and shriveled clump.

Scott Holbrook, an ecologist, stopped to stare at white ash outlining the spot where a large tree fell to the ground and was incinerated.

“That is really a classic,” said John Wilkerson, a biology teacher at Thurston Middle School in Laguna Beach. He pulled out a camera to preserve the eerie sight of the tree’s demise.

Wilkerson also was fascinated by how the the fire had laid bare the geological history of Laurel Canyon. As the group walked along the rim of the canyon, he studied the south-facing slope once hidden under coastal sage.

He showed 77-year-old Esther Burnett, a retired schoolteacher, where the sedimentary layers had broken apart at an abrupt angle, with one side of the break higher than the other. That formation, he said, revealed a fault line caused during a series of earthquakes perhaps a hundred years apart.

Spreading a state geological map of the area on the ground, Wilkerson said he believes that some of the earthquake faults now visible in the canyon had not been charted.

“I think some geologist ought to come in here and remap this,” he said.

Although the canyon was unusually quiet because many birds were displaced by the fire, a few woodpeckers, scrub jays and California towhees were perched in trees. Hawks, turkey vultures and ravens were back in larger numbers, swirling above the canyon in search of prey.

“It is easy hunting for the hawks,” Sweet said. Vultures and ravens, he added, are hunting for “anything that is out there dead.”

Droppings and tracks along the paths show that deer, coyotes and bobcats are still in the area, he said. These larger animals will become more plentiful, he said, as their food and shelter increases.