Life gradually returns a year after fire chars Sierra Nevada

One year after a wind-fed wildfire charged across a craggy mountainside above Lone Pine, Calif., flashes of new vegetation growth can be seen emerging in this still-charred corner of the Inyo National Forest on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. The tiny, fragile flowers and patches of fresh growth against a stark mountainside and slabs of gray rock were a reminder that wildfire is part of the ecosystem in California, including the eastern Sierra Nevada where the fire took place. LONE PINE, Calif.

It’s the start of a long recovery, and a cycle that’s being repeated more often across the West as climate change brings drier, hotter seasons and more wildland fires. But it can be five years before the ground cover returns to what it was before the blaze. One stand of pinyon pines was heavily damaged – needles burned off the branches, their trunks torched black – and will not come back.

Firefighters said they used minimum-impact techniques to fight the blaze because “natural fire plays an important role in maintaining the landscape within these areas.”The area of the blaze — not far from the trailhead to Mt. Whitney, at 14,505 feet the highest mountain the contiguous United States — is home to Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, an endangered species, and to the whitebark pine, an endangered species candidate.

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