Los Angeles has been a battleground for increasing the number of trees lining the streets to offer shelter from the sun, create sanctuaries for residents, and even combat air pollution. However, amidst challenges like prolonged droughts, inadequate tree maintenance, and objections from certain residents bothered by fallen leaves and sap, the city is now facing the aftermath of the January wildfires on these greening efforts.
Bryan Vejar, the associate director of community forestry at TreePeople, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving tree distribution in Los Angeles, expressed concern over the impact of the recent fires. City arborists have shared alarming images of mature trees uprooted onto buildings and walkways by fierce winds that also fueled the spreading fires. Additionally, evidence of charred tree canopies is a stark reminder of the havoc caused by the blazes.
The destructive Santa Ana winds wreaked havoc on trees in communities such as South Los Angeles, Watts, and Inglewood, which are the focal points of TreePeople’s tree equity initiatives. These areas, historically lacking in greenery, have suffered significant losses in their efforts to enhance green spaces and promote canopy coverage.
The air is still so bad that field crews cannot yet go out and work safely. When they do, he said, they expect to to find young trees snapped, broken or dried out.
New trees are vulnerable, and volunteers often have to go out and water them for the first few years.
“Events like this can greatly increase our mortality rates,” Vejar said.
Past fires and extreme winds have torn off many limbs and taken down trees, especially ones planted in narrow strips of land where there isn’t room for much soil, Vejar said.
When it’s safe to conduct field assessments, urban tree experts will go out to inspect, re-stake and retie trees toppled by winds, and remove and replace those that were lost.
Replanting trees in burned neighborhoods is harder now because of climate change, said Will Berleson, a professor at USC’s Department of Earth Sciences and researcher with the university’s Urban Trees Initiative. Even though many of the city’s mature trees might only be 30 or 40 years old, they “started growing at times when it was not as hot and didn’t have these kinds of wet and dry fluctuations that we seem to be seeing now,” he said.
Some experts see tree losses as an opportunity to continue teaching Los Angeles residents about the place they live and what plants are the best fit, not necessarily the iconic ones of Hollywood movies. They would like to replace nonnative species like palms — which are more closely related to grasses — with trees that provide shade and can withstand extreme heat and drought.
Aaron Thomas, director of urban forestry at the environmental nonprofit North East Trees, said trees such as the coast live oak are a good option. They are native to the region and are fire resilient — in fact, they need to burn to reproduce, he said.
Thomas, who grew up in Altadena, has family members who lost homes to the Eaton Fire. His brother’s home burned, but the five coast live oaks in his backyard survived.
For him it’s another reminder that cities need to think about how we rebuild in general and how we reforest communities with native flora: “That’s what we need to do.”
But planting trees with climate-resilient features such as large canopies isn’t always easy, and cities must consider community input when deciding what to plant. Trees that provide a lot of shade can make it difficult for drivers to see around corners, for instance. Where space is at a premium, sometimes there’s just not enough room above or below ground to plant them.
Berleson added that it will take a long time for neighborhoods to look like what they did before the fires.
Trees provide myriad benefits. They clean the air and improve mental health. They capture stormwater runoff and replenish groundwater. And during heat waves that are getting hotter and deadlier, shade trees cool the air and urban surfaces.
Vejar said his group knows there will be setbacks, but that is the reality we’re living in.
“It’s climate change. It’s water restrictions. It’s extreme weather events,” he said. “And so in the face of this, all we can do is continue to build and rebuild and steward our urban forests in such a way that makes it more resilient in the face of these extreme weather events.”
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