Fire Among Giants • iBiology

Duration: 00:11:20
Transcript

00:00:06:14 " - [Host] Welcome to ""What the Docents Know"
00:00:08:03 your insiders' guide to Big Basin Redwood State Park
00:00:11:04 in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California's Central Coast.
00:00:14:05 I had the pleasure of talking with Portia Halbert.
00:00:17:09 Portia has been working
00:00:18:08 with the California State Park System for 19 years.
00:00:21:08 (mysterious music)
00:00:28:23 " [Portia] In the last, I think, five years,"
00:00:30:17 we've had 10 of the most devastating wildfires
00:00:34:13 in the State of California.
00:00:36:11 [Host] Does that raise your anxiety at all
00:00:38:09 about the potential for something catastrophic?
00:00:42:13 I think we've been really lucky
00:00:44:00 to avoid something very extreme
00:00:46:10 here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
00:00:51:21 (light music)
00:01:02:13 (birds chirping)
00:01:06:01 I think we can go this direction.
00:01:12:09 (light music continues)
00:01:14:15 "There is a unattributed quote,"
00:01:17:20 Every landscape in California either is burning
00:01:21:14 " has burned or will burn."""
00:01:24:18 (light music continues)
00:01:39:16 I think there was something like 11000 lightning strikes.
00:01:46:20 (wind whooshing)
00:01:52:22 (fire crackling)
00:01:55:10 We had a wind pick up.
00:01:56:13 It took the three fires that were burning
00:02:00:04 all around Big Basin
00:02:02:04 and it just pushed.
00:02:05:12 It just pushed the fire right through the park.
00:02:08:01 (fire crackling continues)
00:02:10:23 We've had other coworkers say
00:02:13:00 " ""You fire people why didn't you tell us"
00:02:15:10 " that it was coming for us?"""
00:02:18:08 It was really inconceivable.
00:02:22:14 It just happened very very quickly.
00:02:25:18 (light music continues)
00:02:30:12 - [Christian] I thought that Big Basin would never burn.
00:02:33:18 There was no way it could ever burn.
00:02:37:09 Big Basin is really the core wild area
00:02:42:00 that my heart had gotten to know.
00:02:48:14 Every time I went back after the fires
00:02:51:00 there was some amount of unfamiliarity
00:02:53:17 in places that I otherwise would've said I knew
00:02:56:09 like the back of my hand.
00:02:58:15 The place had changed visually so much
00:03:01:02 that I couldn't find my way.
00:03:08:21 I don't know what to expect
00:03:11:00 because I have no benchmark
00:03:13:04 for a high-intensity redwood forest burning.
00:03:16:14 This is the only one I've ever seen
00:03:18:13 and it's the only one most people have ever seen.
00:03:26:05 - [Narrator] The redwood trees of California
00:03:28:03 are probably the oldest of living things.
00:03:31:07 All of the world's history since Christ was born
00:03:33:22 could've occurred during the life
00:03:35:09 of perhaps one of these redwoods.
00:03:45:14 Down they come some of the world's oldest
00:03:48:10 biggest and tallest trees.
00:03:50:12 (light music)
00:03:53:23 But don't think these giants are being completely destroyed.
00:03:57:17 Many of the oldest and the biggest of the redwoods
00:03:59:23 are being saved.
00:04:02:03 (light music continues)
00:04:10:15 - Around the end of the 1800s
00:04:12:20 people started to recognize that these beautiful forests
00:04:16:22 that they were slowly disappearing.
00:04:18:17 (light music continues)
00:04:24:22 The heart of the last of the redwood habitat
00:04:27:07 is right here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
00:04:32:21 As the first state park
00:04:34:13 Big Basin was the first piece that was protected.
00:04:41:09 On our left here
00:04:42:10 is where the old-growth redwood loop is located
00:04:47:05 it was located.
00:04:50:08 This is a one-mile loop that takes you around
00:04:52:22 to see some really beautiful different features
00:04:56:07 on redwood trees.
00:04:57:17 (light music continues)
00:05:22:22 This is where they would have campfire presentations.
00:05:29:16 Every night of the summer
00:05:31:13 they would have some sort of program here.
00:05:38:03 We've got 200-plus campsites in this park
00:05:41:04 or sorry we had.
00:05:43:20 We had a lotta campsites here.
00:05:47:02 (light music continues)
00:05:56:00 - I have been around fire pretty much my whole life.
00:05:59:18 You learn to read the landscape.
00:06:01:11 Like what are the daily patterns of wind that come through?
00:06:04:16 Is this what we're hearing right now coming through
00:06:06:22 is this normal or is this linked to a storm
00:06:09:08 that's coming in?
00:06:11:19 There were a lot of uses of fire by Indigenous peoples
00:06:15:20 such as Ohlone communities along the coast.
00:06:20:05 They would see that
00:06:21:13 " ""Oh the health of the grass is declining."
00:06:23:13 " We need to burn."""
00:06:24:16 " Or ""We're getting too much litter accumulation"
00:06:27:04 " on the forest floor."""
00:06:33:04 The policies of fire suppression dates back to about 1793.
00:06:40:00 And that proclamation forbid Native people from burning
00:06:44:06 and applied the harshest penalties to it.
00:06:48:23 When California was settled as a state in 18491850
00:06:54:02 there were also policies that the state had imposed
00:06:57:12 against burning specifically to tribal people.
00:07:02:19 So we're basically looking at 200 and almost 50 years
00:07:06:17 of fire suppression.
00:07:09:19 This is a consequence of it.
00:07:17:11 - Fire changes everything.
00:07:20:11 It really changes how plants interact with the soil
00:07:23:12 how fungi interact with the soil.
00:07:25:15 (birds chirping)
00:07:28:19 (light music)
00:07:29:18 Find the moisture find the mushrooms.
00:07:31:13 Here's a little smorgasbord
00:07:33:17 of fire-following fungi right here.
00:07:36:18 Look at there's this little seep here
00:07:38:13 where the moisture is coming out of the hillside
00:07:41:04 and that's where all the fungi are.
00:07:43:12 These are Geopyxis pixie cups
00:07:46:04 a little stalked cup fungus that is pretty abundant
00:07:49:01 after forest fires especially up in the Sierra.
00:07:50:21 I don't think I've ever seen them in Santa Cruz
00:07:52:08 until just now.
00:07:53:14 (light music continues)
00:07:55:09 Holy moly.
00:07:57:12 So this is called a cabbage head fungus
00:07:59:17 pretty much known from burned areas
00:08:01:19 not really a mushroom you expect to see otherwise.
00:08:05:11 And just look at it.
00:08:06:07 I mean it is a striking creature.
00:08:08:14 It's having an amazing year across the state.
00:08:10:06 People are finding it everywhere because of all the burns
00:08:12:08 more than probably has ever been seen before.
00:08:15:14 (light music continues)
00:08:21:20 - One of the things that you notice
00:08:23:16 if you spend some time in the redwood forest
00:08:26:02 " you're like ""Well where are all the young trees?"""
00:08:28:12 They just cannot get established
00:08:31:23 when the duff and the leaf litter is a foot or two thick.
00:08:37:22 You need to have something like a flood or a fire
00:08:42:05 to burn up a bunch of the duff and leaf litter
00:08:46:05 so that the seeds can get established.
00:08:48:05 (light music continues)
00:09:00:23 They're all over.
00:09:03:06 They're like in every direction I'm looking.
00:09:07:08 I've never seen this before.
00:09:09:16 Tens of thousands of seeds germinating
00:09:12:21 all from this one event pretty cool.
00:09:16:08 (light music)
00:09:21:09 We don't have a lot of money historically
00:09:23:15 for our burn program and now hopefully
00:09:27:05 we'll be receiving wildfire and forest resiliency money
00:09:31:03 in the next five to 10 years.
00:09:34:02 We'll have the opportunity
00:09:35:08 to do a lot of things differently.
00:09:39:15 - If we put the right fire in the right places
00:09:41:11 at the right times we won't see this kinda loss.
00:09:44:12 (light music continues)
00:09:58:08 In our society we've kinda got this idea
00:10:01:12 that fire is so bad for everything.
00:10:04:15 What we see is that the world around us is really resilient
00:10:07:13 and for wildlife
00:10:09:13 there's a lotta benefits that come from it.
00:10:13:16 She's a cavity-nesting duck.
00:10:15:04 She's a merganser.
00:10:18:16 It's really good for her to probably be in this forest
00:10:21:12 because there's lots of potential for cavities now
00:10:24:00 to be in some of these trees
00:10:25:06 and she'll have places to nest in
00:10:27:16 and her chicks can come down here and use this creek too.
00:10:31:16 (birds chirping)
00:10:34:08 It's not always doom and gloom.
00:10:41:19 - [Portia] It will be different for awhile.
00:10:44:18 It will not be what it was
00:10:47:20 but it'll be something new.

This Talk

Speakers: Portia Halbert, Don Hankins, Christian Schwarz

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: April 2021

Talk Overview

Fire is a force for destruction, but also of rebirth. This vivid lesson is at the heart of Fire Among Giants, a provocative and intimate look at a world famous forest in the wake of the most destructive inferno on record. The ancient redwoods of California’s Big Basin State Park have witnessed centuries of change, and now they will stand sentinel over a landscape forced to rebound in a rapidly warming climate.

Please head to the Science Communication Lab’s website for more films like this along with educator resources, full video transcript, and most up to date content.

View Transcript on SCL Website →

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Speaker Bio

Portia Halbert

Portia Halbert

Portia Halbert is a Senior Environmental Scientist with the Santa Cruz District of California State Parks. For over 19 years she has been part of a resource management team who works to manage parkland and restore habitat in the 70,000 acres of Parks in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. Continue Reading

Don Hankins

Don Hankins

Don Hankins is a Professor of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico. Drawing from his academic and cultural knowledge he is particularly interested in Indigenous traditional knowledge and policy and their application as a keystone process to aid in conservation and stewardship. Continue Reading

Christian Schwarz

Christian Schwarz

Christian Schwarz is a research associate at the Norris Center for Natural History at UC Santa Cruz who studies mushrooms in California. He is coauthor of “Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast,” and is slowly building a mycoflora for Santa Cruz County. You can find him on Instagram @biodiversiphile. Continue Reading