The fire came quickly. Fueled by dry, blustering winds, officials were unable to contain the Woolsey fire before it scorched the canyons of Ventura and Los Angeles counties, taking close to 97,000 acres and 1,500 properties with it.
One of the great casualties was the Santa Monica Mountains national recreation area. Nearly 90% of the federally owned land burned in the November 2018 blaze. The park is home to popular hiking trails, a rich ecosystem of plant and wildlife, including mountain lions and coyotes, as well as famous spots such as the Paramount Ranch’s “Western Town” (a well-known Hollywood set location), the historic 1927 Peter Strauss Ranch house, a research field station and ranger residences. Nearly all of them burned to the ground.
“We have a bunch of trails to repair and a bunch of debris to clear away and buildings to build,” says Kate Kuykendall, the acting deputy superintendent. “The damage to the park was very significant.”
Researchers believe it will be decades before the hills are fully restored. Still, after a series of winter storms, officials are hopeful to see the blackened moonscape beginning to come back to life.
Wilderness under threat
The destruction has threatened the future of the plants and animals who live here, as well as the scientists who study them. The park has long been a living laboratory for scientists used to better understand human impact and adopt conservation strategies. Mountain lions, coyotes and bobcats have been tracked over the course of 20 years, the endangered red-legged frog was brought back from the brink, and invasive plants were closely monitored and managed.
“We are still trying to understand how it impacted the wildlife here,” Kuykendall says. “Two of the mountain lions we were tracking died, either directly or indirectly as a result of the fire”, she added. One of them was the locally famed “Culvert Cat”, a young mountain lion who earned the nickname for using culverts (underground pipes) to cross local highways.
Along with miles of habitat and studied landscapes, a field station for UCLA’s La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, jointly operated by the university and the National Park Service, was lost to the fire.
Researchers at the center are using the tragedy as an opportunity to study the severity and the impact of the fire, and how the plants and animals will recover. The center’s director, Brad Shaffer, who is also a professor in ecology and evolutionary biology, is leading teams of scientists and volunteer students to catalog the recovery as it happens. It’s already clear the fire has had a big impact on the organisms that call this park home.
“It’s all well and fine to say, well the plants are going to re-sprout and there’s going to be flowers and the insects will be back in three months. But if you are a lizard, you have starved to death in three months,” he says.
Meanwhile, encroaching human development has made this fire worse for the animals, who have less space to flee or recover. “They just don’t have as much room to maneuver. They don’t have as many options for getting out of the way and there aren’t as many options for them to recolonize,” he explains.
Hollywood history lost
The recent government shutdown has caused delays, both for the scientists and recovery efforts across the park. Still, officials have promised that the structures and the trails leading to them will be rebuilt in the next two years, and hope to restore Paramount Ranch – and the sense of Hollywood history once housed in the hillsides.
Tucked into the oaken savannah of the Santa Monica Mountains, Paramount Ranch provided a chance to peer inside the sets used for some of the most popular TV shows and movies, many of which were filmed there over the last several decades.
“The site is almost a total loss,” David Szymanski, the Santa Monica Mountains national recreation area superintendent, told reporters in November.
Crafted from Paramount Pictures’ prop sheds during the 1950’s, the site has served as the frontier town traversed by Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, the setting for witch trials in colonial Massachusetts for Maid of Salem, and the backdrop of a Gary Cooper adventure in ancient China for The Adventures of Marco Polo. More recently, was overrun with rogue robots for HBO’s science fiction series, Westworld.
“It is just really important for all sorts of reasons” says Charlotte Parry, the executive director of not-for-profit and National Park Service partner Santa Monica Mountains Fund. “Everyone was so saddened when it burned.”
Now, all that remains is the church constructed for Westworld that solemnly overlooks the charred land where the main street once stood, and a railroad station created for Dr Quinn. Along with the town, a ranger’s house and soundstage were also lost to the flames and some of the ancient oaks were heavily burned.
Despite the challenges ahead, hope remains that the park will be restored. Green has already begun to creep onto the ashen hillsides. Plants are again taking root, covering the blackened burn scars. The bones of burnt buildings and charred cars are slowly being hauled away.
But, the devastation left by the fire won’t soon be forgotten. “The hills and mountains in general are starting to grow back.” Parry says. “There are areas of really bright green. In some places you can hardly see that there’s been a fire – but if you look any closer you can see there’s still black underneath.”
