Volunteers have begun the long process of replanting trees burned during the largest fire in Los Angeles County history.
Crouching on a charred slope in the Angeles
National Forest, La Cañada Flintridge resident John Schiller carefully
packed soil around a 6-inch green sapling. It will serve as a
replacement for one of the millions of trees burned in the Station fire
last August.
“I think if [the forest is] all of ours to enjoy, it’s all of ours to take care,” Schiller said.
Schiller
and his wife, Karin, were among the three dozen volunteers who spent
Saturday working alongside representatives of the U.S. Forest Service as well as Tree People, a forest conservation group, planting young Coulter
and Ponderosa pines.
The event, which took place at Chilao
Campground, located half a mile south of Newcomb’s Ranch Restaurant on
Angeles Crest Highway, was part of a comprehensive, multiyear
reforestation project being spearheaded by the Forest Service, according to the La Cañada Valley Sun.
The
Station fire, which ignited just north of La Cañada on Aug. 26, burned 53 square miles of forest. In some places the heat was so intense that
it seared the soil, hampering future natural regeneration. And in the
foothills immediately north of the Crescenta-Cañada area, it created
conditions ripe for dangerous debris flows.
— Megan O’Neil, reporter for the La Cañada Valley Sun
Photo: Beth Olhasso and John Stranger plant pine
tree saplings on a slope in the Angeles National Forest on Saturday.
The Foothill Reforestation Committee is leading a local grassroots
effort to assist the U.S. Forest service with replanting the San
Gabriel Mountains. Credit: La Cañada Valley Sun