Inside California’s plan to protect Joshua Trees

When renewable energy companies Start razing thousands of people Joshua trees to be planted this month to make way for massive solar farm caused an uproar Mojave Desert resident and activist.

It’s a public demonstration of the thorny dilemma conservationists face as they try to protect Joshua trees in the West. While the state is finalizing a draft conservation plan later this year, climate change and solar energy plans are threatening the desert habitat of these iconic trees.

Climate scientists predict that by the end of the century, western Joshua trees will be left with only 10% arrive 25% The land they now live on. And, as the Mojave and Colorado deserts continue to get hotter and drier, Southern California’s succulents may be all but wiped out – Includes from Joshua Tree National Park.

The problem, experts say, is that while many species can migrate north to higher elevations to escape rising temperatures, Joshua trees migrate too slowly to keep up.

“Joshua trees are in the midst of a triple squeeze,” said Christopher Smith, a professor of biology at Willamette University. 2023 Paper Discover how to balance solar development and Joshua Tree conservation.

The first is climate change, Smith said. Second, habitat loss due to urbanization and solar development. Finally, wildfires are getting more intense — which could lead to wipe out The proportion of all living Joshua trees in a season is considerable.

“According to our census, there are places where half the trees have died over the past 15 years,” Smith said.

after years of hard work Climate advocates and state governments fail to list western Joshua trees, a different species from eastern Joshua trees, as endangered by 2022 made a law to protect them. It orders the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to draft a conservation plan backed by science and Native Americans by the end of 2024, and imposes fees on the removal of Joshua trees — fees that will be used to fund conservation efforts.

for many years, environmental groups and even government agency There has been discussion of moving the plant north to Oregon, where the climate a hundred years from now will be similar to Southern California. However, Joshua Tree scientists say transplanting the species isn’t that simple.

Among other relocation obstacles, western Joshua Tree relies on Single species of yucca moth Pollinate them. They also need unique, underground fungal network Transport nutrients to trees. Scientists say the plants may also depend on other species, but they haven’t discovered them yet.

“I think most people would say it’s a Hail Mary pass,” Smith said of moving the factory far away. “To have those [trees] As a long-term legacy, it requires more than just animals in a zoo, but a well-functioning ecosystem.

In 2020, a Joshua tree in Juniper Hills was engulfed by the Bobcat Fire.

(Irrfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

Instead, the Department of Fish and Wildlife is taking defensive measures, focusing on protecting trees in select locations where they have the best chance of survival. Scientists are using future climate models and maps of Joshua Tree locations to identify areas within the trees’ current habitat that will still have an acceptable climate a hundred years from now.

Many of these areas, known as climate reserves, are small, meaning scientists need extremely detailed maps to identify them. So a team at the U.S. Geological Survey set out to make one. They studied nearly 1 million points on more than 50,000 square miles on Google Earth; they then drove more than 9,000 miles along paved dirt roads and conducted 30 field trips to verify what they saw in the satellite imagery. whether the trees actually exist.

Result data set, Released December 2023, a battle map for the state’s army of conservationists and scientists. They’re using it to identify refuges throughout the region—places where they can deploy every defense in their arsenal and protect holdouts from land developers, wildfires, heat waves and droughts.

Measures could include clearing flammable brush, planting new Joshua trees, and working to protect the entire ecosystem the trees depend on, including moths and fungi. The state also asked scientists to study how to make trees more resilient.

Smith and his colleagues sequenced and counted the genomes of 300 Joshua trees. From such genetic maps, scientists discovered that some populations of Joshua trees had genes that made them possible. More resistant to hot and dry conditions.

Although no research has been published on the topic, preliminary evidence suggests that roots adapted to the fungus to better gather nutrients may be more capable of sprouting new trees after forest fires, Smith said. This burgeoning research body could help the state introduce specific adaptations into protected areas and generally work to maintain high genetic diversity, essentially helping Joshua trees adapt more quickly to climate change.

The state’s focus on protected areas doesn’t mean all other Joshua trees are doomed, however. The conservation bill includes a tree relocation program to move trees threatened by real estate development to these climate protected areas. wildland preserveis a nonprofit organization that owns dozens of preserves across the Western United States and also hopes to provide homes for resettled Joshua Trees.

In 2006, the Sawtooth Complex Fire destroyed Joshua Tree lands within the preserve’s 2,500-acre Pioneer Mountain Preserve, located northwest of Joshua Tree National Park. Tim Krantz, the organization’s conservation director and professor emeritus of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, hopes to work with the state to restore the forest by transplanting Joshua trees.

Thousands of Joshua trees, such as this large sapling estimated to be 150 to 200 years old, will be moved from the outskirts of Bologna to make way for giant solar arrays.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

But moving an entire forest isn’t easy or cheap. Conservationists need large hydraulic tree shovels to scoop up plants and the dirt around them. When replanting a tree to another location, administrators must ensure that the same side of the succulent faces north and follow an intensive watering regimen for the first few years after the move.

“We hope to eventually move hundreds of trees, and at that scale … there’s a lot of monitoring and maintenance that’s going to be required, a lot of crews on the ground,” Krantz said. Yashu.

While Kranz hopes the conservation fund will support the effort, the fund — which funds all aspects of conservation — may not have enough money to cover the entire expensive process of relocating every tree threatened by real estate development.

Scientists, state officials and tribes are still discussing the details of the conservation plan, but Fish and Wildlife isn’t waiting to take action. The first step in creating an ecological fortress around the Joshua Tree Preserve is ensuring that the state owns the land or has the rights to conduct conservation efforts there. In 2023, the department Completed the first piece of land expropriation with non-profit organizations Native American Land Conservancy.

The site is not only a potential Joshua Tree preserve but also a cultural site for the Kawaisu tribe. The land will now be protected in perpetuity by tribes and conservancies who voluntarily entered into legally binding conservation easements at the urging of the state.

“It really reassures everyone that this land will always be used for its intended use because it will be documented,” said Nicole Johnson, an attorney working with the tribes and a board member of the Native American Land Conservancy. .

A desert ecologist leaves a Joshua Tree research site in Joshua Tree National Park in May 2023.

(Gina Ferrazzi/Los Angeles Times)

In addition to working with the Native American Land Conservancy, the state works with more than a dozen Native tribes to manage conservation programs and combine science with traditional ecological knowledge. However, building relationships with tribal governments takes time, said Drew Kaiser, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife who coordinates the development of conservation plans. The co-management aspect of the program is still in its early stages.

The department is also working with a solar project in the Mojave Desert near Boron to protect more than 80,000 acres of Joshua tree habitat, According to the company. The state requires companies to pay Over $1.3 million Deposit into a conservation fund to offset damages. However, the company does not plan to relocate any of the 4,700 trees.

For Smith, this is the reality of the situation the country finds itself in. “Many species will become extinct, many Joshua Tree populations…will become extinct. We are now in a position of stopping the bleeding and deciding who to save.