New conservation strategy aims to save SoCal's vanishing forests

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Southern California is known for its incredible ecological diversity, from desert expanses and coastal cliffs to lush mountains. But, as climate change worsens, the health of these habitats will become increasingly vulnerable.

One of the most at-risk, but nonetheless vital landscapes is the region's higher-elevation hardwood and conifer woodlands, also known as montane forests.

These forests are important protectors for the upper watersheds of the state's major rivers, supplying 40% of the water used downstream for drinking and agriculture. The trees in the forests are also critical for carbon capture, soil erosion prevention and wildlife.

And yet, these habitats are shrinking faster than any other part of the state's ecosystem.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, interacting threats like wildfires, droughts, pollution, development and invasive species have contributed to this disappearance alongside the stress of a rapidly changing climate.

To combat this, federal officials and scientists are pursuing implementation of a new climate-adaptation conservation strategy, announced on Tuesday, that is designed to help land managers preserve Southern California's montane forest.

"These threats facing our forests were over a hundred years in the making and restoring and protecting them will require long-term investments," Megan Jennings, a research scientist and co-director of San Diego State University's Institute for Ecological Monitoring and Management, said in a 2021 video on the initiative.

Crafted through the collaborative Southern Montane Forests Project over the last four years, the strategy is described as a "roadmap for increasing the resilience" of these woodland areas, which are scattered throughout the Transverse and Peninsular mountain ranges.

These ranges include the locations like Mount San Jacinto, Mount Laguna and San Gorgonio Mountain.

According to the Forest Service, the roadmap includes three major components: A customizable framework for making decisions about projects while prioritizing forest health, crafting a "regional adaptation menu" to combat climate stressors, and creating a post-fire restoration plan for reforestation projects.

The framework would essentially serve as a broad, jumping off point for stewards — whether its a municipal agency or tribal nation — for the forest land to help craft science-based projects aimed at increasing the land's resiliency.

"These threats don't stop at boundaries or fence lines, so we plan to take an all-lands approach, working to find common ground among different partners and stakeholders across the region," Jennings said. "We envision that this strategy will lead to joint projects to enhance forest health and resilience at the landscape scale."

The Southern Montane Forest Project also plays a key role in the Forest Service's Wildlife Crisis Strategy, which aims to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires across the country.

According to Jennings, the risk of these large fires has increased significantly over the last century throughout the montane forests, given a lowered frequency of smaller, low-intensity fires to clean up the forest floors.

Historical records analyzed by researchers with the Southern Montane Forest Project indicate that low-intensity fires have decreased by upwards of 67 to 99% since a century ago, mostly due to fire suppression efforts.

"Without these low-intensity fires, our forests have become more dense and the understory and latter fuels have accumulated, making the forests more susceptible to stand replacing fire," Jennings said.

She pointed to the Bobcat, Apple and El Dorado fires of 2020 as an example of this compound effect, growing fires with more fuel as they encounter these forests — a dynamic that then contributes to additional forest loss.

The lack of low-intensity, frequent fires also makes the region's forests more susceptible to drought, disease and insect mortality, according to the Southern Montane Forests Project — impacts that have a ripple effect on the entire biome's ability to weather climate stressors.

As Jennings said in a statement on Tuesday, the collaborative work undertaken by the Southern Montane Forest Project hopes it will create "common ground action" and support "cross-boundary partnerships that will be needed to increase the pace and scale of work to protect our region’s forests.”

The full 131-page strategy can be found on the Climate Science Alliance's website.

“We are losing our montane forests faster than any other part of California,” said Jeff Heys, a landscape manager with the USDA Forest Service for the Southern California Wildfire Crisis Strategy. “Implementing this strategy will ensure future generations in Southern California can still enjoy these forests.”