Photograph of 2 boys wearing scout uniforms kneel near a hole in the ground in a charred forest setting, while one holds a seedling.

Boy Scouts plant trees at the site of the 2006 Day Fire.

Photograph of 4 tree seedlings wrapped in plastic.

Seedlings grown at the Placerville Nursery

Los Padres National Forest Sets Tree Planting Record

  • Mike Landram, Regional Silviculturist

The Los Padres recently completed tree planting on over 1,000 acres of forestland burned in the Day Fire of 2006, which is 5 times more planting than any other year in the history of the forest! A planting project with Boy Scouts helped celebrate the unprecedented season.

Forestland is rare on the Los Padres; only about 10% of the national forest can grow trees. So it's especially tough when severe wildfire burns this kind of land. Jeffrey pine forests are not likely to recover any time soon when the seed source provided by mature trees is lost.

Speaking of seed source, Greg Thompson arrived in his new forester job on the Mount Pinos Ranger District soon after the Day Fire to learn that even the seed bank at the Placerville Nursery did not have enough seed for the Day Fire area. Working with support from the Region's Genetics Unit, Greg spent a year gathering seed from cones and purchases from CalFire, then identified the best places on the Day Fire to plant while seedlings were being grown at the Placerville Nursery, and then administered a planting contract with help from Bill Krips of the Eldorado National Forest.

Now a late spring rain would be just perfect to help the new forest through its first year.