As we've been witness to, especially this past decade and more in just the past few years, as records are broken in all kinds of climate issues and not with years separating them but many set at different times in the past being overcome rapidly one after the other in just these past few years. This is just another example but has been happening in other regions of the world already.
Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees across thousands of acres scorched clean by the devastating 2009 blaze. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.
April 7, 2012 - Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation.
It would give him hope after a year of disappointment.
Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.
"That's too bad," said Bear, resource officer for the service's Los Angeles River Ranger District, shaking his head in disappointment. "When we planted seedlings, conditions were ideal in terms of soil composition and temperature, rainfall and weather trends. Then the ground dried out and there just wasn't enough moisture after we planted."
Foresters estimate that just a quarter of the 900,000 seedlings planted across 4,300 acres are thriving. That is far below the 75% to 80% survival rate the agency wanted.
On most slopes, instead of small trees, the ground nurtures dense shrubs and grass in the shadows of skeletal dead trees scorched by the 2009 blaze. read more>>>
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