Wildfire Recovery

next to it stretch of top o canyon road in simi valley a wood rats carries out of a discarded and burnt washing machine the charred skeletons of shrubs stand motionless in a field of ash larry meyer a botanist with the california department of fish and game grams of black in the limb of a coyote bush she says the shrubs might look dead but we're probably going to re sprout from the dates of the burnt primaries stay on some of the plants in the chaparral re sprout from the dais after fires and there's others that have to go through a whole cycle of coming up from the seabed when soleil most of the open space left in coastal southern california is made up of two kinds of shrub dominated habitat called coastal sage grab and chaparral myers says these ecosystems have evolved with fire and are adapted to it and with sufficient rain some plants will even become more abundant after a fire by less get kind of excited about after the fires because we get this really beautiful wild flower displays catalina

lilies which are a large hand several inches inches of like to look like flour and creamy white there's a beautiful rare plumbers marathon grilling in this area the fantasies and as but meyer and some scientists say it's likely people have accelerated southern california's natural fires cycles we have more fiery than we ever have historically john keeley is a fire ecologist with the us geological survey he says the greater frequency of fires in areas near cities is creating a problem several decades without fire in order to recover if you burn with and to quickly you connect your paper the view from the area and greatly reduce the hair metal the birth of ian what replacement them are alien invader we both of which come from europe the main concern is non native grasses that are already displacing native plants these grasses don't feed and shelter

wildlife as well as native plants do so how native plants regenerate will in large part determine how well animals will fare fishing games mary myers stands on a stream bank that mostly escaped the fire the willows and cat tales are green or only slightly cinched overhead one black tv is chasing another perhaps in a territorial dispute mary myers says animals displaced by fire often have to compete for food and shelter on another animals her their rent refugees there the dispossessed and what often happens is they're picked off by things that they don't know where they get laundered no hidin is the biggest concern is for him danger its feces california has more than any other state except hawaii and most are in peril because a lot of their habitat has been destroyed former la county biologist franco boer says one of them is a small blue gray bird called the california

gnatcatcher it only lives in a few places in for southern california counties virtually all of its habitat in ventura county burned up in the recent fire some of them have undoubtedly mukunda jason arrasmith and burned some of them are sheltering in yards as they can get away for the cats and dogs for the next year or so as they habitat recovers from the fire they may well be able to go back in and colonize it but i would guess that it probably at least half of the number of birds that were there perished in the fire biologists say even when many individual animals die those that survive can re populate burned areas as the plants re sprout but no one really knows how well wildlife can rebound from so many fires as we continue to pave over and fragment the landscape in simi valley ell society all at nine point three kpcc