Though wildfires blazed through Cascade Creek in the summer of 2020, signs of nature’s resurgence are already showing. Many second-growth redwoods and some of the underbrush are sprouting as winter brings a welcome, wetter time. For years, Save the Redwoods League has sought to attain Cascade Creek, which contains a sprawling mix of second- and old-growth redwoods. Before the CZU Lightning complex fires raged, the league had already reached a deal with landowners. On Dec. 9, the league officially announced the purchase of the property’s 564 acres, located between Big Basin Redwoods and Año Nuevo state parks, for $9.6 million. It bought the property from the Holmes family …[who] wanted to ensure it would be protected and public for future generations… “This year’s fires have amplified our need to protect the coast redwood forest,” league President and CEO Sam Hodder said. “We need resilient habitat in the face of a changing climate.

A combined effort of public agencies and the private timber industry are in the process of cleaning up the remains of the 2015 Grizzly Bear fire that burned more than 74,000 acres west of Troy. Wallowa County Commissioners Todd Nash and John Hillock were instrumental in prodding the U.S. Forest Service to sell what it initially considered a nearly worthless timber sale, said David Schmidt, of Integrated Biomass Resources in Wallowa. “Commissioners Nash and Hillock invited the Forest Service to see what needs to be done,” Schmidt said Wednesday, Dec. 30. “It’s a good example of everyone working together to make it happen.” IBR produces firewood, fenceposts and poles at its mill in Wallowa, employing 25 people full time, Schmidt said. “It’s a really positive contributor to keeping 25 full-time jobs going,” he said. … “This is a really cool timber sale in that it was dead wood that was going to be burned.”

California’s 2020 wildfire season thwarted the state’s fight against climate change, spewing enough carbon dioxide into the air to equal the emissions of millions of passenger vehicles driving over the course of a year. Those roughly 9,600 fires burned nearly 4.2 million acres, killed 31 people, and emitted an estimated 112 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to a California Air Resources Board report released Dec. 31. The number is akin to the greenhouse gas emissions of 24.2 million passenger cars driving in a single year, according to a calculator from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. …Increasing fire intensity and the health dangers of the accompanying smoke is California’s new reality and needs to be faced now, advocates and politicians say. …State officials say calculating wildfire emissions is challenging. It depends on updated vegetation information, prior fire history, and having correct burn area boundaries in often rugged areas.