Faced with more drought and increasingly frequent wildfires, Southern Californians have been encouraged, for years, to rip out water-guzzling lawns. They have also been urged to forgo nonnative, aggressively growing, highly flammable plants that take over space from native species, particularly after fires.
But no expert believes even a Los Angeles completely carpeted with native plants could have impeded the blowtorch of fire that swept through an area deprived of rain and desperately dry. A homeowner could have planted every single ecologically correct thing around their home and still have lost it in this firestorm.
However, it’s smart to defend future landscapes as much as possible against fire. That means not just replanting burned areas but gradually transforming Los Angeles overall into an environment of less flammable plants, more native species and more fire-hardened buildings. The goal would be not only to protect homes and structures from fire but also to encourage a more ecologically sound environment — one where native plants thrive and provide sustenance for insects and birds and don’t get muscled out by non-native plants.
The Los Angeles Fire Department already has regulations about clearing brush and dead vegetation around a house and trimming trees and shrubs.
But what would an overhaul of the environment look like?
Fragrant eucalyptus trees, indigenous to Australia, sway in the breeze along roadways and in groves. Stately palm trees, lining neighborhoods, are a defining emblem of Los Angeles.
The two trees are among the most notorious of non-native plants that are highly flammable. In a fire they can go up like Roman candles — although wildfire is fickle, and these recent fires left various palms and other trees intact beside burned homes. Whether they burn down or not, the dead fronds that hang onto palm trees and the peeling bark of the eucalyptus can become fiery embers carried in the wind across miles like deadly missiles, landing on homes or in brush. (Of course, in these intense fires, everything — a wooden piece of a house, bark mulch in yards, a part of landscape plants — could have become an ember.)
Were the fires this time spread faster or hotter by those particular non-native plants? That’s something experts won’t know until later. There are a few reports of residents who did everything right — cleared brush around their homes, put down native plantings and hardened their houses against fire — and did have their houses survive in neighborhoods where other houses did not.
Of course, “native” doesn’t mean “fireproof.” Coastal sage scrub and chaparral, which provide habitat to numerous species of insects, reptiles and mammals, burn readily and in fact need fire to survive.
In this area, native plants have adapted to fire seasons and regenerate from seeds underground or left on the ground after a fire. But if it takes more years for them to regrow than it takes for wildfire to return, those plants can end up not surviving and being replaced by invasive nonnative species with few enemies (like insects) to keep them in check.
Besides palms and eucalyptus, other plants that wreak havoc in this dry, windblown area include non-native fountain grass that spreads along roads and steep hillsides, as well as mustards.
Should we cut down all our eucalyptus and palm trees to be safer? Not all, but probably some, says Stephanie Pincetl, professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities. She suggests they be planted in the less flammable urban core or in parks. “We don’t have to be draconian about this, but we have to be thoughtful,” she says.
That also means exploring which native plants are available and desirable. Those include native coast live oaks. “They are like the grocery store of native plants. If you do one thing, plant oaks,” says Nick Jensen, conservation program director of the California Native Plant Society. They support insects, birds and squirrels. They can survive some wildfires, and if they do burn to the ground they may sprout back from their base.
Sumacs, California lilacs and Western redbud are all native species that thrive here. Among desirable non-natives that do well in Los Angeles are citrus and other fruit trees, such as cherry, peach and plum, which are fairly fire resistant.
“We’ve chosen in California a lifestyle where it’s our houses and a certain level of vegetation around it,” says Jensen. “We could have housed just as many Angelenos in a smaller amount of space and saved wild lands. But that’s what we chose.”
That’s not necessarily wrong. But keeping that urban lifestyle next to wild land is going to take thought, careful planning and acceptance of a certain level of risk. City and county officials and communities need to think creatively about what flora to plant — along with how to rebuild — and figure out what is doable and what is too expensive. But the rebuilt and relandscaped L.A. shouldn’t just be a re-creation of what burned.
After a deadly 1991 firestorm swept through the Oakland hills, residents paid into a fund for fire prevention work, but that stopped when a new prevention tax 10 years ago was voted down. Finally, last year, voters in a special wildfire prevention zone voted to tax themselves for a vegetation management plan.
Whatever plan of action Los Angeles city and county decide upon for land management, let’s make sure it starts right away and continues sustainably.
