As Joshua trees burn, massive wildfire threatens to forever alter Mojave Desert
As Joshua trees burn, massive wildfire threatens to forever alter Mojave Desert
As firefighters finally made progress on California's largest wildfire of the year, national park officials and ecologists are preparing for irreversible habitat losses.
“We’ve lost a huge area of native vegetation,” said Debra Hughson, deputy superintendent for the Mojave National Preserve. “A lot of pinyon [pines], junipers gone forever, and a lot of the Joshua trees, likely.”
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I’ve been out there before when I was in wildland fire with BLM, one of the issues with the Preserve is (and issue meaning making things more difficult, not that it’s a bad thing in general) there’s a very strict ban on vehicles going anywhere besides premade roads/trails.
That means that instead of like most fires in this type of fuel where engines can drive up and directly attack it, it’s a hiking game. And even then there is strict rules about what kind of damage you can do to the area. In any other area this would a straight forward, put dozer line in, have crews start burning, and engines start mobile attacking areas they can get to. That’s why seeing fires like this sucks, because I know the crew (if they haven’t all left yet) from the Mojave National Preserve, and I know they’d want to do more to stop it.