Burned Area Rehabilitation at Whiskeytown

A yerba santa plant regrowing post Carr Fire.

 

Whiskeytown is a landscape adapted for fire. Regularly occurring, low intensity fires are a part of the natural process for this landscape and are necessary for some of the plants and animals here to maintain their diversity and receive vital nutrients.

However, due to factors like human-caused climate change, we are seeing larger wildfires that are severely affecting the area. Several fires throughout the years have impacted the park, but none as severe as the Carr fire (2018). It would become the most destructive fire in the history of the National Park System, burning 97% of the park and ultimately taking the lives of three firefighters, four civilians, and over 1,600 structures across the park and community. While the park and surrounding areas have been recovering, there is still more being done to rehabilitate the area. Other smaller fires, such as the Zogg Fire, House Fire, and Kennedy Fire have also impacted recovery in the Carr Fire footprint in recent years.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-Burned Area Rehabilitation Program (BIL-BAR) is helping us continue to respond to the needs of the environment as it has been impacted by all these recent fires.

 

What Is Burned Area Rehabilitation?

The Burned Area Rehabilitation (BAR) Program aims to protect resources by repairing or improving burned landscapes unlikely to recover naturally to healthy conditions without human assistance.

The program can help jump-start the landscape recovery process through spreading of native plant seeds, treating invasive plants via disrupting the growth of targeted plant species, and contouring landscapes to control runoff. The program also can fund the repair or replacement of minor infrastructure damaged by a wildlife.

What is necessary for burned area recovery will look different depending on each unique landscape needs post-fire.

 

Burned Area Rehabilitation at Whiskeytown

Natural Resource Management

A large focus of BAR at Whiskeytown has been efforts to maintain native vegetation that has survived the Carr fire or has regrown since. Two major ways our park has been handling this aspect of recovery is through the treatment and removal of invasive species and seed collection for future replanting.

 

Top: Staff applying herbicide to an invasive stump. Bottom: GBI staff preparing seeds to be sent for amplification.

Invasive Removal

A high priority for the invasive plant management team is protecting areas where weeds have not yet become well established. Invasive or noxious weeds are non-native species that can reproduce quickly and outcompete native plants for water, nutrients, and space. After disturbance from a fire, invasive plants are often more successful in competing with native plants. These invasive species thrive in disturbed areas, and they have adaptions that make them aggressive colonizers. This means that they have a higher chance of displacing the healthy native plant communities and negatively impacting the entire ecosystem.

To lower the chances of this happening within the park, the invasive crew works hard to treat invasives using various methods such as hand pulling, brush cutting, and herbicide application. Projects during fiscal year 2024 have included...

• Invasive blackberry removal at Carr Powerhouse, Tower House Historic District, Crystal Creek Water Ditch, Peltier Bridge Campground, and other high visitor use areas in the park.
• Removal of Bull Thistle and Mullein on Shasta Bally and at Coggins Park.
• Tree of Heaven removal from Crystal Creek Water Ditch.
• Hand pulling of yellow star thistle on Kanaka ridge.
• Monitoring of post-treatment areas.

Seed Amplification

Another area of focus for the Natural Resouces Team has been on seed collection of native species for restoration work in burned areas. A crew of Great Basin Institute (GBI) interns has been working with the park's Vegetation Ecologist to collect workhorse restoration species. These native plants were chosen for collection because of their ability to compete with non-native weedy species and high likelihood of success in restoring various native plant habitats if they are employed. Crew members collected no more than 20% of the seed from wild populations, to ensure these populations are not over-harvested and negatively impacted. They then processed and cleaned the seed to allow for storage. BAR funding in 2024 provided increased capacity for these activities to expand by funding seed amplification. Seed amplification occurs when wild collected seed sources are sent to a farm where they grown in ideal conditions to encourage the highest seed yields. Using BAR funds, Whiskeytown has initiated at partnership with Heritage Growers, that will begin growing out locally sourced collections of Gum Plant (Grindelia camporum) and Oregon sunshine (Eriophyllum lanatum) for use through restoration areas in the park over the coming years. This process gives us the opportunity to introduce more of our native species back into the park as we recover from the fire.

 

Historic preservation at Tower House Historic District

The Tower House historic District has seen a lot of change post fire. Work to restore burned areas here has included preservation of the remaining heirloom apple varieties, marking abandoned mine features, and vegetation management.

 

Top: Restored apple orchard at the Tower House Historic District. Bottom: Staff tending to an apple tree within the apple orchard.

Heirloom Apple Orchards

Before the Carr Fire, there were 167 documented fruit and nut tree species at Whiskeytown. Around 60% of these trees were lost due to the fire. After the fire, park management staff and a local arborist took apple scions (cuttings) from the remaining historic trees while they were still alive. These cuttings were rushed to the coast for propagation and then grafted onto root stock in a partnership with Humboldt Cider Company and Friends of Redwood Acres. These small seedlings were then transplanted back into the historic orchard where a small but dedicated staff continues to tend to them and ensure they can be enjoyed for years to come. Each apple is unique, and some could be the only variety in existence, so the focus of recovery here is making sure what remains can be well nourished.

Historic Structures

Another BAR project carried out in the Tower House Historic District was a scan of the site for erosion and resources that could now be exposed post-fire. Artifacts and abandoned mine features that may have once been covered by vegetation were now visible and posed a threat to visitors. Public hazard elements were removed or marked off to ensure visitor safety.

Landscape Maintenance

Part of our goals for historic preservation includes returning the landscape of the Tower House Historic District back to its appearance of the mid-1880’s. The Carr Fire both positively and negatively impacted the condition of the historic landscape in the district, since both desirable and undesirable vegetation burned. Since the fire, we have been able to utilize locally sourced goats to further manage the vegetation in the area. They serve as natural lawn mowers, efficiently cutting down vegetation and helping protect the historic area from another fire. A contract for mechanical vegetation removal was also implemented to continue removing undesirable and dead material from the district. Additionally, the invasive plant management team has been significantly involved in managing weeds post-fire to reduce invasive species impacts to the cultural landscape.

 

Open Transcript  Open Descriptive Transcript

Transcript

Join us as we take a look at two ways. That Whiskeytown National Recreation Area is continuing to work to restore the ecosystem after significant impacts from the car fire across the park. This recovery work is made possible through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-Burned Area Rehabilitation Program. We work for the Great Basin Institute as contractors for the park service. And it's a whole lot of fun because we go on hikes to survey Native plants and invasive plants. And it just feels really rewarding to do all this hard work and be able to actually see the results for all this effort you put in and see such beautiful, like scenery and landscapes while you do it. So today we are doing cut and paint treatments for scotch broom. And the way we're doing it is we cut them as close to the ground as possible. And next, we apply an herbicide mixture to the cut areas. This will make the roots die back, and hopefully the plant will not grow back. So in 2024 Bill Barr allocated funding as part of the California seed strategy to whiskeytown to facilitate container growing and also what's called seed amplification. Over the past few years, we've been growing out our seed collection, protocol and also program where we go and collect native seed sourced from Whiskeytown. And we've acquired enough seed at this point that we're beginning to divert some of our seed resources to our partner, heritage growers, that's in the central valley. And what they do is they take our native collected seed and they will grow it out. Based on our protocols, we only collect about 20% of a population at a time. So that we don't deplete the population of the native stock. And what we do is we collect over the years, and then we send it to heritage growers, and they will grow out that seed for a period of one to five years and then they send us that seed back. And because they're actually farming it and creating ideal conditions for growing those species, they get a lot more seed than they would in wild populations. And we get to use this in post fire restoration in different areas around the park to help combat invasive species, but also help facilitate native plant habitat. This is our collection of stipa lemmonii, which is a type of native grass. This is what they look like pre processed to try to get some of the excess material off so that we can send it off to get a amplified and we can reseed out some areas that have either been affected by fire or other disturbances. Learn more about our Burned Area Rehabilitation projects at nps.gov/whis

Descriptive Transcript

Four national park service crew members walk down a hill holding weeding equipment. Video cuts to two of these crew members stacking invasive plants that have been cut down, followed by a panoramic shot of the area they have just cut these weeds from. The words, “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – Burned Area Rehabilitation program (BIL-BAR)” overlay the landscape of plants and dead trees. The text “Invasive Plant Managment” is animated over a green background. A crew member stands in front of tall green grass and trees, animated text “Kaylie, Great Basin Institute Intern” appears briefly in the lower third of the screen. She describes her job while looking at the camera and referencing to the environment around her with her hands. Video cuts to another crew member, surrounded by lots of plants and trees, witch mountains in the background. He is holding a long sturdy green plant, which he explains is an invasive plant called scotch broom. Animated text reading, “Steven, Great Basin Institute Crew Lead” appears briefly in the lower third of the screen. the video cuts to a different crew member cutting the scotch broom at the base of the plant using loppers. The cut area in then shown up close up. A crew member wearing rubber gloves, uses a syringe to apply a blue liquid herbicide to the stump of the plant. The video cuts again to multiple stumps that have had this herbicide applied to them.  

The text “Seed Amplification” is animated over a green background. Video cuts to a National Park Service employee standing in front of golden brush and green trees. Animated text reading, “Chris, Vegetation Ecologist” appears briefly in the lower third of the screen. He remains in this spot while explaining the seed amplification process. Video cuts to a crew member holding unprocessed seeds from a plant called stipa lemmonii. A singular seed is them shown up close, so that you can see the excess material they are going to remove from the seed. The next shot is zoomed out so that you can see the crew member sitting down while taking seed out from the bag. Animated text reading, “Celeste, Great Basin Institute Intern” appears briefly in the lower third of the screen as she begins to explain how they remove the material from the seed. A Montague of clips then plays of the seeds going through a seed process, close-ups include loading the seeds into machine, access material being discarded, and the finished seed. Overtop of the sorted seed, an animated arrowhead logo pops up, and then slides to the side to reveal the text,” Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Visit nps.gov/whis.” The logo then slides back over the text and disappears. The screen goes black as the video ends.  

Duration:

2 minutes, 52 seconds

Our team has been working hard to restore the ecosystem after significant impacts from the Carr Fire across the park. This recovery work is made possible through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – Burned Area Rehabilitation program (BIL-BAR). Check out our video to see first had some of the work being done and hear from the crew behind this progress.

 

Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-Burned Area Rehabilitation Program we have been able to make incredible progress in restoring the landscape of Whiskeytown and look forward to continuing this important work!