Nature Stages Comeback in Fire-Charred Landscape : Ecology: Plants and animals re-emerge after last October’s blazes. But experts say full recovery is years off.

If a symbol of hope and renewal has emerged from these fire-ravaged canyons, it is embodied in a modest little shrub called laurel sumac.

Springing from a moonscape of blackened bark and gray ash, knee-high clumps of emerald-green sumac are already dotting the hillsides of Laguna Beach’s prized Laurel Canyon. Born of autumn fire, weaned on spring rain, the native shrub is one of the first to stage a comeback after last October’s wind-whipped wildfires scorched about 150,000 acres of sage scrub, chaparral and woodlands in five Southern California counties.

From Orange County’s San Joaquin Hills to the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the torched earth had barely cooled when tiny branches of wild sumac began sprouting like clones from the blackened stumps of their predecessors, which everyone but a botanist might assume were hopelessly dead.

The rapid regeneration of laurel sumac and other native plants and animals without human help seems miraculous, but this is one miracle that nature performs routinely in Southern California.

Fire is Mother Nature’s New Year’s Eve, clearing out the old and ringing in the new. From Thousand Oaks, Malibu and Altadena to Laguna Beach, Temecula and Escondido, thousands of acres of dense, decades-old shrubs and chaparral were incinerated last fall, only to be replaced with small, fresh sprouts and fields of wildflowers by spring.

“Fire destroys momentarily but rejuvenates in the long term,” said Mickey Long, director of Altadena’s Eaton Canyon Nature Center, which burned down and is yet to be rebuilt.

Still, as the first anniversary of the beginning of the firestorms arrives this week, ecology experts say it will take about eight years, perhaps longer, for Southern California to return to the lush, healthy diversity of flora and fauna of a year ago.

In the meantime, much of Southern California’s prime parkland and other wilderness hovers in a fragile, eerie gap between death and resurrection. Forlorn piles of shriveled, fried cactus and raw earth lie next to festive poppies and lilies that rose from the ash in bursts of color last spring. Gnarled, old sycamores and oaks, rendered charcoal black, are sprouting tender green shoots.

Some wild animals have survived--even thrived--in the aftermath, including burrowing rodents that are vital to the ecosystem as prey for mountain lions, hawks, eagles and other predators. But the gnatcatcher, a federally protected songbird, has not fared as well. About 14,000 acres of some of the bird’s best habitat was destroyed in the Laguna Canyon fire, and it could be years before the tiny birds return.

Just how quickly these animals and their natural habitats recover is almost completely at the mercy of natural forces. The land will fare best if blessed with mild winter rains and spared major fires, at least for awhile. Frequent or ill-timed man-made fires, instead of rejuvenating the wilderness, can permanently denude it of native plants and animals.

So far, wildlife biologists and botanists are pleased with the nascent recovery of the wilderness, especially the return of some spectacular, long-dormant wildflowers.

Many scorched valley oaks, sycamores and other trees also survived, including 90% of 200 oaks burned at Eaton Canyon. Oldest trees fare the best, while some saplings have such thin trunks and bark they cannot survive flames.

“It is recovering beautifully,” said Suzanne Good, a state parks associate resource ecologist in the Santa Monica Mountains, who oversees 40,000 acres of parkland, most of which burned. “There are certain areas where it is difficult to tell there ever was a fire, especially Malibu Lagoon, where some (native plants) are already shoulder high.”

One afternoon last week, a full moon rose on one side of Laguna Beach’s Laurel Canyon as the sun set on the other, bathing the chasm in the muted shades of autumn. While most of the wheat-colored ridges were still naked, many were attired in new patches of lemonade berry, sumac and pastel flowers. Hawks and great horned owls, even one rare golden eagle, soared above.

“This looks better than I thought it would,” said botanist Fred Roberts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as he toured the area for the first time since the first days after the October fire. “I really thought it would still look dead. I’m impressed we’re seeing so much green.”

Before arson-spawned flames fanned by Santa Ana winds whipped across it, this parkland wedged between Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Irvine had been one of Southern California’s largest and most biologically diverse wilderness areas. Its thick clumps of sagebrush, lemonade berry and buckwheat attracted gnatcatchers, deer, rare lizards, butterflies and other creatures.

After the firestorms, some experts worried that the heat was so intense that the plant roots would be incinerated. Trish Smith, a Nature Conservancy biologist who manages nature reserves owned by Orange County’s largest landowner, the Irvine Co., was relieved that the initial fears were wrong.

“People were saying it was such an intense wildfire that (vegetation) wouldn’t come back very well, so from that perspective, this is better than I expected,” she said.

When the flames ignited Oct. 27, Smith was exploring Laguna Beach’s lush Boat Canyon, and preparing for a long-awaited grand opening of the Irvine Co.’s sprawling reserve the next day. Watching a giant plume of black smoke approach over the ridge, she evacuated. When she returned after the fires were extinguished, about 80% of the Irvine Co.’s 6,600-acre southern reserve had burned, along with 90% of adjacent Crystal Cove State Park and Orange County’s year-old Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.

“There was nothing but bare ground and white ash,” she recalled. “I was in a state of shock.”

In the 12 months since then, the expansive area has turned into what Smith called a botanist’s dream--long-dormant flowers such as California fuchsia have sprung to life. The public opening of the Irvine Co. reserve was postponed, but the tours are even more popular than expected, Smith said, since nature lovers swarm to the area to watch the rapid changes.

Before the fire, flower seeds couldn’t compete for the sun’s rays because much of this land was dense with brush. Fertilizer-like nutrients in the ash, sunlight reaching the soil and mild spring rains combined to revive the buried seeds.

Other fire-scorched areas--especially Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County, Leo Carrillo State Beach near Malibu and Caspers Wilderness Park in San Juan Capistrano--also attracted visitors with striking springtime shows of wildflowers, including many varieties that hadn’t appeared for years.

In the Altadena area, where about 5,000 acres of wilderness burned, 20 varieties of flowering plants new to the area--including monkey flowers, lilies and phacelia--and half a dozen new species of birds have appeared in Eaton Canyon. Only one local inhabitant--the acorn woodpecker--seems to have declined in numbers, apparently because its food supply of acorns was burned.

Poppies in burn areas of Leo Carrillo State Beach were more spectacular last spring than the famous annual display in the Antelope Valley. And after Ventura County’s Green Meadow fire scarred 44,000 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains, wildflowers there bloomed in abundance, including two rare types of Mariposa lilies at the Circle X Ranch.

“Circle X was in fact the best display I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Rick Burgess, a Thousand Oaks city planner and board member of a local branch of the California Native Plant Society. “The combination of yellow, lilac and purple was just beautiful.”

Some of the flowering plants, dubbed fire followers, require the intense heat of a fire to pop open their tough seed jackets.

“I’m particularly fond of the cream-flowered eardrops, which will bloom profusely the year after a fire, then a little less in subsequent years until they disappear,” Burgess said.

The wildflowers, while impressive to human visitors, are not vital to sustaining Southern California’s ecosystems. Much more critical are California sagebrush, lemonade berry and other shrubs that native animals use to feed and breed.

While the shrubs have begun to re-sprout, they are not nearly mature enough to allow creatures such as gnatcatchers, a threatened species that resides in Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties, to return.

Before the Laguna Canyon fire, 47 pairs and nine single gnatcatchers lived on 14,000 acres of prime sage scrub habitat between Laguna Beach and Newport Beach. After the blaze, none remained, according to spring, 1994, data accumulated by the Orange County Environmental Management Agency. Also, only three pairs of cactus wrens--compared to 101 pairs before the fire--were found on the burned land.

Gnatcatchers, just 4 1/2 inches long and feeble flyers, cannot easily flee flames and smoke. Most are presumed dead, although 29 pairs showed up in the spring on unburned scrub to the northwest, offering hope that they were refugees that escaped the fire.

The losses to the gnatcatcher, however, were originally feared to be much worse; biologists had thought 100 to 200 pairs inhabited the area before the fire, but a review of the data now shows that the birds apparently had been over-counted, said Tim Neely of the environmental management agency.

Many gnatcatchers and cactus wrens also were wiped out in the firestorms that swept through Riverside and San Diego counties.

“The gnatcatcher took a big beating,” said Bill Wagner, biological resources coordinator at the Metropolitan Water District’s Riverside County Multi-Species Reserve, two-thirds of which burned. “But over time, they should come back again.”

While the species survived, wildlife biologists warn that it cannot take much more stress--from either fire or urban development--before slipping closer toward extinction. Orange County, as a result of the Laguna firestorm, is now reviewing its policies for managing wild land, including new policies for controlled burns.

“It was a large amount of habitat that went up in one fell swoop,” Neely said, “and we are very concerned about the effects of these kinds of catastrophic occurrences, not just on the gnatcatcher but the total biodiversity of the region.”

Mice and many other rodents--important prey for hawks, eagles, coyotes and other predators--have flourished because thick, tangled brush was burned, leaving more hospitable and nutritious grasses and buds.

One endangered species, the Stephens’ kangaroo rat, might even be better off now than before the Riverside County fire, which cleared several thousand acres of brush that was becoming too dense to suit the burrowing creatures.

“The fire was probably beneficial in the long term,” said John Bradley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. “It opened up a lot of coastal sage scrub habitat, (which) gives the Stephens’ kangaroo rat a chance to move into some of those open areas.”

Southern California’s top predator--the mountain lion--also seems to be thriving because of a healthy increase in mule deer and other prey that feed on tender sprouts, said state Fish and Game warden John Wilcox, who patrols the Santa Monica Mountains.

Tenacious and destructive weeds, however, such as mustard and artichoke thistle, are invading and crowding out some native shrubs and grasses that feed deer, birds and other creatures.

Undesirable red brome and wild oat have grown on slopes in southwestern Riverside County, where more than 25,000 acres burned. Rare grasslands in Point Mugu State Park’s La Jolla Valley are in particularly poor shape, since mustard took hold there after the fires and grew nearly 12 feet tall.

“It (mustard) gets a head start on everything else,” said Milt McAuley, author of “Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains,” as he hiked through the valley. “This year there was no competition. It won’t get quite so high next year.”

Some of the responsibility for the appearance of non-native grasses belongs to the state Department of Forestry, which sprayed hillsides with seeds to control erosion. Native seed was preferred by forestry officials, but it is difficult to obtain, so a mix containing ryegrass, which can overtake local shrubs and grasses, was sprayed in parts of Altadena, Thousand Oaks and Laguna Beach.

Ray Towne, a Pasadena Glen resident involved in reseeding efforts by the Forest Service and the private Forest Preservation Society of Southern California, said cost was a key factor in choosing seed, leaving them with the choice of spraying ryegrass or risking mudslides in residential areas. The mix containing ryegrass was considerably less expensive than the native seeds.

“Our choices were very pragmatic,” Towne said. “The preservation of life and property and watershed topsoil was what led me to participate in putting ryegrass, a controversial procedure, on the watershed.”

Despite such unnatural intrusions, hopeful signs lie in the return of a vestige of wild California--the ecologically valuable but mundane shrubs such as laurel sumac.

“What I like to see is all those little green bushes all over the hills,” said McAuley, who hikes in the Santa Monicas several times a week. “That’ll be a nice forest in five years.”

Times staff writer Tom Gorman and correspondents Mary Pols and Deborah Sullivan contributed to this story.