Climate change and more than a century of overzealous fire suppression are now fueling wildfires so severe that they\u2019re wiping out the very forests<\/a> that need fire to thrive \u2014 leaving iconic landscapes at risk of turning into brush and scrub, permanently.<\/p>\n Over the past quarter century, high-severity wildfires have burned 2.3 million acres of California\u2019s forestland so completely that the trees are unlikely to return on their own \u2014 according to a working draft of the state\u2019s new reforestation strategy obtained by CalMatters.<\/p>\n California is counting on these forests to store carbon, protect water supplies<\/a>, clean the air, and shelter wildlife. By 2071, one recent analysis reports<\/a>, half of California\u2019s forest area could be gone.<\/p>\n \u201cReforestation,\u201d said Malcolm North, a scientist with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, \u201cis pretty damn important.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet to replant even a quarter of the privately owned forestlands in the state, California would need to increase seed bank capacity by roughly 300%, according to Cal Fire<\/a> \u2014 which means more seeds, more people, more space. And that wouldn\u2019t solve the problem on federal land, which accounts for more than half the forests in the state and most of the lands that need replanting.<\/p>\n CalMatters reviewed a working draft of California\u2019s reforestation strategy; the USDA California Climate Hub is developing it with state and federal agencies, the conservation non-profit American Forests, and the Governor\u2019s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force.<\/p>\n But both Sacramento and Washington have spent decades letting the money and staff needed to grow back California\u2019s forests wither.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to focus on reforestation as an emergency, as a state,\u201d McMorrow said.\u00a0\u201cWe are slowly losing our forestland, and we\u2019re not catching up.\u201d<\/p>\n Leilani Villeda prepares to fire a weighted line into the high branches of a pine tree using an air-powered launcher during Cone Camp, an annual training session where participants learn how to survey and collect pine cones, in Pollock Pines on July 15, 2026. <\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Anna Hoch-Kenney<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n CalMatters<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Bleeding the federal workforce<\/p>\n Timber harvests once paid for much of the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s efforts to replant trees.<\/p>\n But as new laws tightened endangered species and other public lands protections<\/a>, logging in national forests declined. Severe wildfires also increased.<\/p>\n The combination devoured the Forest Service\u2019s resources, and people<\/a>: from 1998 to 2015, non-fire staff tasked with managing National Forest System lands decreased by 39%, according to a 2015 report<\/a>.<\/p>\n With ever-increasing demands, a 2022 Forest Service document warned<\/a>, there is a \u201ccritical need\u201d to increase the number of staff \u201csubstantially dedicated\u201d to reforestation.<\/p>\n Congress and the Biden Administration unstoppered additional money<\/a> for a reforestation trust fund in 2021, a move championed by the conservation non-profit American Forests. Just a few years later, the Forest Service reported that it had replanted roughly 285,000 acres nationwide \u2014 the highest yearly total<\/a> in more than a quarter century.<\/p>\n But the need still dwarfs action, and federally-directed work is lengthy and intense. Crews must clear dead and dying trees quickly to reduce the danger to people and the chance of reburns, a Forest Service spokesperson said. Finding seeds and growing seedlings can take a year or two, even before planting.<\/p>\n The federal government\u2019s capacity to replant forests eroded away over time, and it will take time to rebuild it, said Solomon Dobrowski, a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Montana. Dobrowski\u2019s research found that the reforestation gap spans millions of acres<\/a> across the West and is likely to double or even triple in the coming decades.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t turn that ship around on a dime,\u201d Dobrowski said.<\/p>\n Instead, the Trump administration cut the Forest Service significantly. The agency lost 20% of its staff last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just makes me cry at night \u2026 it\u2019s basically a child swinging a wrecking ball,\u201d said Hugh Safford, a forest and fire ecologist with the UC Davis Environmental Science and Policy Department and a former regional ecologist for the Forest Service. \u201cMorale is down, capacity already was really minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n And California keeps burning.<\/p>\n Stewart McMorrow, staff chief of wildfire resilience for Cal Fire, opens a box of seeds in the seed bank at the Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis on July 15, 2026.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Anna Hoch-Kenney<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n CalMatters<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n A widening gap<\/p>\n The loss of forests \u201cis one of the least-known impacts of climate change and megafires,\u201d said wildfire task force director Patrick Wright.<\/p>\n The draft strategy for California obtained by CalMatters comes with no dedicated funding. The goal, Wright said, is to put every agency and organization trying to replant California\u2019s scorched forests on the same page.<\/p>\n The strategy calls for streamlining planning, prioritizing projects tackling critical human safety concerns and ecosystem issues like water supply, and increasing the supply of seeds, seedlings and workers.<\/p>\n It urges land managers to avoid adding more fuel to the fires, and recommends replanting at lower densities and with more natural spacing instead of the classic, closely-packed \u201cpines in lines\u201d grid. Scientists have linked high-density plantings<\/a> to high-severity fires.<\/p>\n The most startling pieces, though, come from the draft strategy\u2019s look at the current landscape. California would need to scale up reforestation by 35% annually to meet the state\u2019s existing post-fire replanting goals<\/a>, which start at 280,000 acres per year in 2030. The increase would take \u201csignificant funds,\u201d the report said, because reforestation can cost up to $6,400 an acre.<\/p>\n But the current pace is lagging. Statewide, land managers have replanted roughly 254,000 acres of severely burned forest since 2020 \u2014 or around 16% of the area stripped of forest cover by high severity fires between 2020 and 2024 alone. The number is just 8% on federal lands, outside of wilderness areas.<\/p>\n Safford said the numbers are actually even more dire: Factoring in both wilderness areas and excluding forests likely to regrow on their own, his recent study reports<\/a> that the U.S. Forest Service replanted just 1.2% of the agency\u2019s California lands that wildfire denuded between 2016 and 2023.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always like this, said Safford. The Forest Service\u2019s replanting efforts mostly kept pace with wildfires until around 2006.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then,\u201d Safford said, \u201cit just falls to shit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Nowhere near prepared\u2019<\/p>\n For all the vitriol between Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump over the care and raking of California\u2019s forests<\/a>, state and federal money \u2014 and people \u2014 often intersect on the landscape.<\/p>\n On California\u2019s end, Cal Fire funds<\/a> and conducts research, and provides grants<\/a> for forest restoration on private<\/a>, state and even federal land. Cal Fire also runs the\u00a0reforestation center in Davis, where flats of glossy young conifers are gently misted with water in the summer heat.<\/p>\n McMorrow \u2014 tall and crisp in his navy Cal Fire uniform \u2014 can\u2019t help but dig his hands into the dirt to pull out weeds tangling with the seedlings.<\/p>\n One of the most challenging chokepoints, McMorrow said, is finding the right seeds to grow these seedlings \u2014 getting climbers to the right spot, at the right time, to pluck ripe cones from the treetops.<\/p>\n \u201cBelieve me, I do it,\u201d said McMorrow, who created a tree-climbing program at Cal Fire. \u201cWe are trying to meet the demand that\u2019s in front of us, and it\u2019s crushing.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet the money for Cal Fire\u2019s efforts \u2014 cobbled together from the state budget, federal grants and other one-time funds \u2014 represents a relatively small and ever-changing fraction<\/a> of Cal Fire\u2019s multibillion-dollar budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n The nursery in Davis shut down in the early 2000s<\/a>, a casualty of across-the-board state budget cuts. Though the seed bank freezer stayed on, the reforestation center didn\u2019t fully reopen until after the Legislature in 2017 tapped a 2012 fee on wood products<\/a> to bring it back online.<\/p>\n Scaling up and upgrading the facility now carries an estimated\u00a0$26.2 million<\/a> price tag; this year\u2019s state budget included about\u00a0$1.2 million<\/a> to fund preliminary planning.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, other funding is on the line. California\u2019s climate regulators \u2014 chaired by Newsom appointee Lauren Sanchez<\/a> \u2014 voted in May to overhaul a key climate program\u00a0<\/a> in ways that<\/a> could substantially reduce, or even eliminate, up to $200 million a year for wildfire resilience. Grants for reforestation are among the many competing priorities for this funding.<\/p>\n While the Proposition 4<\/a> climate bond includes $1.5 billion<\/a> for wildfire and forest resilience, state leaders<\/a> are spending down the bond quickly<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe truth of the matter is that California is probably, infrastructurally speaking, in a better place than any other western state,\u201d Safford said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat that tells you is how piss-poor the capacity is in general in the Western U.S., because California is nowhere near prepared for the scale of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Cone hunting<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785068427_507_.jpeg\")
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