In a charred moonscape, a band of hopeful workers try to save the Joshua tree
By Christopher Intagliata
Charred carcasses of Mojave yuccas, Joshua trees and chollas are seen at the edge of the York Fire in San Bernardino County, California, inside Mojave National Preserve. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRCharred carcasses of Mojave yuccas, Joshua trees and chollas are seen at the edge of the York Fire in San Bernardino County, California, inside Mojave National Preserve.
Krystal Ramirez for NPR– Jedediah Smith, 1826.
Early western explorers who ventured into the Mojave Desert, like Jedediah Smith, often mischaracterized it as a barren landscape, devoid of life.
Yet a closer inspection of these sweeping landscapes reveals soil-hugging carpets of springtime flowers, native grasses and fragrant shrubs, alongside the more obvious cacti and succulents.
Where the desert lives up to its stereotype is after a wildfire.
In the shadow of last month's York Fire in California's Mojave National Preserve, almost nothing is left amid the rocks and sand, except the charred carcasses of Mojave yuccas, Joshua trees, and chollas. The soil is a mottled brown and black, and some plants have been reduced to mere silhouettes of char on the ground.
A scorched Joshua tree (left) and a burned barrel cactus are remnants of the York Fire. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRA scorched Joshua tree (left) and a burned barrel cactus are remnants of the York Fire.
Krystal Ramirez for NPRThe moonscape is the result of a fire that burned quickly and widely, engulfing roughly 130 square miles of the preserve – including picturesque Caruthers Canyon, a boulder-strewn spot popular with campers.
Debra Hughson is the deputy superintendent at Mojave National Preserve. She says Joshua trees are struggling to keep up with such swift climate changes. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRDebra Hughson is the deputy superintendent at Mojave National Preserve. She says Joshua trees are struggling to keep up with such swift climate changes.
Krystal Ramirez for NPRWhat she means is the park's dense Joshua tree forests may never come back after a fire. A grassy savannah might rise up to replace them, with a few Joshua trees scattered throughout as a reminder of what once was.
Plant remains hang over Valley View Ranch, one of the sites that burned in the 2020 Dome Fire at Mojave National Preserve. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRPlant remains hang over Valley View Ranch, one of the sites that burned in the 2020 Dome Fire at Mojave National Preserve.
Krystal Ramirez for NPRThe road was a firebreak during the 2020 Dome Fire. Flames destroyed an estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees on Cima Dome, an area that was once the park's grandest example of dense Joshua tree woodland. The area's relatively high elevation was supposed to serve as a sort of sanctuary – a climate refuge where Joshua trees could continue to thrive amid hotter, drier conditions elsewhere in their range. Then, the fire came – an unexpected destabilizing force that casts that long-term trajectory into question.
Hughson trained as a geologist. She talks about the future of the Joshua tree and what might happen at Cima Dome as if she still assesses these seismic ecological changes at the tempo of geologic time. "In the end," she says, "the desert is going to tell us what it's going to be and it's going to show us what it's going to be."
Replanting hope in the desert
Scientists are not waiting to see what the desert becomes. They're actively intervening with an ambitious years-long project to replant some 4,000 Joshua trees at Cima Dome.
Biological science technician Erin Knight walks through a graveyard of dead Joshua trees, near the remains of an old cattle operation called Valley View Ranch. Some of the plants have toppled to the ground. Others still stand, but they're falling to pieces; the branches that once stretched up to the sky now dangle and sway eerily in the desert wind.
Erin Knight is a biological science technician at the Mojave National Preserve. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRErin Knight is a biological science technician at the Mojave National Preserve.
Krystal Ramirez for NPR"Kind of our own little chandelier here in the desert," Knight jokes.
Mojave National Preserve technician Ryan McRae observes the remnants of the Dome Fire. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRMojave National Preserve technician Ryan McRae observes the remnants of the Dome Fire.
Krystal Ramirez for NPR"Unfortunately, restoring Joshua trees is more of an art than a science, and sometimes it works out really well and sometimes it doesn't," Hughson says. Some of the baby Joshua trees have been eaten, especially those without a cage. Others die of thirst, though volunteers and scientists at the preserve make their best efforts to water the baby seedlings.
"There's been hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that have participated. We even had a camel train packing water into these," Hughson says. Restoration work in the desert, she explains, is not for the faint of heart.
Supervisory park ranger Sierra Willoughby waters a baby Joshua tree, named "Lychee," inside its protective cage. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRSupervisory park ranger Sierra Willoughby waters a baby Joshua tree, named "Lychee," inside its protective cage.
Krystal Ramirez for NPR"It's a tale of failed experiments," Hughson says. "Go look at the literature on restoration in the desert, especially the Mojave Desert. And OK, 'Well, this didn't work.' Another paper on, 'Well, that didn't work.' 'OK, well, we tried this, and we failed miserably.' And the stories of success are very rare."
Still, hundreds of these Joshua tree seedlings have survived. Knight's colleague Ryan McRae found one nearby. It's only a few inches tall, and looks like the top of a baby pineapple. Knight looks up its name, and says it's called "Lychee."
A surviving Joshua tree inside the Mojave National Preserve. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRA surviving Joshua tree inside the Mojave National Preserve.
Krystal Ramirez for NPRIt's still tiny, and McRae points out one of the huge challenges of restoring a forest with two-inch-tall seedlings. "These Joshua trees only grow about 1.5 to 2 inches per year. So if you can imagine a 10-foot-tall tree or so, you can get an idea of how many years or decades it would take to get to that height." At a conservative 1.5 inches per year – it would take at least 80 years to return this area back to the way it was before the fire.
Seed technician Christina Sanchez stands outside the old restroom that's been converted into a seed lab, behind the historic Kelso schoolhouse. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRSeed technician Christina Sanchez stands outside the old restroom that's been converted into a seed lab, behind the historic Kelso schoolhouse.
Krystal Ramirez for NPR"This is our seed lab," says Christina Sanchez, a seed technician. "This is where we're sorting all of the Joshua tree seeds, and where we store them before they go to the nursery." The nursery is a facility near Lake Mead, where rows of pots contain baby Joshua tree sprouts, ready to be transplanted into the wild.
Sanchez pulls over a big bucket, full of cream-colored Joshua tree fruits she and her team have collected. She takes one out and shakes it: "Sounds like a little rattle," she says. The seeds are about the size of roma tomatoes, but they're brittle and hard. She breaks one open with a crack, and reveals the black hockey-puck-like seeds inside.
A curious contraption that looks like a cross between an ant farm and a pinball machine hooks up to a shop vac blower. It's a seed cleaning machine, and when Sanchez switches on the blower, the seeds flutter through the chutes inside.
Clockwise from top left: Sanchez opens Joshua tree seed pods. Right: She then separates the seeds with a seed cleaning machine. Bottom left: Sanchez shows a handful of seeds after they have been separated. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRClockwise from top left: Sanchez opens Joshua tree seed pods. Right: She then separates the seeds with a seed cleaning machine. Bottom left: Sanchez shows a handful of seeds after they have been separated.
Krystal Ramirez for NPRFrom here, she'll dump the viable seeds into big jars, labeled with the collection site, and put them in a big chest freezer. The freezer is already half full of jars brimming with some 300,000 Joshua tree seeds.
"This is the future of the species," Sanchez says. "This deep freezer here, this is holding our future."
Many of the Joshua tree seedlings planted so far have died, raising the question whether collecting and storing seeds is a gesture of hope.
"We're going to lose a species if we don't try," she says. "We just gotta keep trying."
Sanchez stands next to a chest freezer holding a jar of Joshua tree seeds that were harvested prior to the York Fire. The freezer is already half full of jars brimming with roughly 300,000 Joshua tree seeds. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRSanchez stands next to a chest freezer holding a jar of Joshua tree seeds that were harvested prior to the York Fire. The freezer is already half full of jars brimming with roughly 300,000 Joshua tree seeds.
Krystal Ramirez for NPRDebra Hughson acknowledges that the replanting effort is just a "drop in the ocean," given the massive losses of Joshua trees here in recent years. "That's a few hundred we've managed, in a landscape that had 1.3 million," she says. "So you can do the math."
Numbers aside, Hughson expresses skepticism that people really have much of a role in "rebuilding" wilderness. "I don't think that wilderness areas can be built. They can be designated, but nature created it," she says. "We seem to be capable of destroying it ... but we can't create something that we don't really even understand."
A Banana yucca sprouts in the burned landscape near Valley View Ranch. Krystal Ramirez for NPR hide caption
toggle caption Krystal Ramirez for NPRA Banana yucca sprouts in the burned landscape near Valley View Ranch.
Krystal Ramirez for NPREven so, the replanting project continues in October. The goal is to get 2,000 more Joshua trees in the ground over the next two years, and as before, . That human aspect, Hughson says, might be one of the most compelling reasons to do what seems very difficult, if not near impossible, on an ecological scale.
"It makes us feel better. You know, psychologically, there were a lot of people that got a lot of good feelings and satisfaction from helping with the Joshua tree planting," she says. "And to try to help makes you feel better about yourself and more hopeful about the future. And that in itself is a valuable thing."
