SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
California's Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara, is home to one of the world's rarest pine trees, the Santa Rosa Island Torrey pine.
HEATHER SCHNEIDER: They're on a part of the island that's fairly windy. So they have, to me, sort of a beautiful windswept appearance to them.
DETROW: This is Heather Schneider, director of conservation and research at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
SCHNEIDER: From a distance, they make this beautiful mosaic of green canopy and these rocky canyons. And they're just these giants in a place that doesn't have a lot of tall trees.
DETROW: These giants had to contend with an existential threat this month, a huge wildfire that tore through about a third of the island. The flames threatened the Santa Rosa Island Torrey pines, along with other rare plants found nowhere else on the planet. The wildfire is now nearly contained. And I asked Schneider how it felt watching this island burn knowing how many rare species call it home.
SCHNEIDER: It was hard. It definitely tugs at the heartstrings when such a special place that is unique on the globe is imperiled like this. And just all the special plants and animals that occur nowhere else in the world and wondering how they're going to fare in response to this.
DETROW: Any sense of how the pines are?
SCHNEIDER: The good news is that preliminary data and drone footage show that it was probably mostly a low-intensity fire burning invasive annual grasses in the understory of the trees. It doesn't look like the fire got up into the crown, which is really important for minimizing damage. Although it looks like some of the trees probably did experience a little bit higher intensity fire. And so things are probably a little more dire for those trees that got a bit hotter. And we're hoping that the damage was minimal.
DETROW: And I read that only a few months ago actually, you and the garden unveiled a grove of baby Santa Rosa Island Torrey pines on the mainland.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. Yeah. Here at our garden, in our Living Collection, we just installed a conservation grove with trees that were grown from seeds collected on Santa Rosa Island, collected from about 40 different mother plants. So trying to get a good amount of genetic diversity from the island protected here off-site. And so the timing is a little bit eerie.
DETROW: Yeah.
SCHNEIDER: But it's really important that we have this reservoir of genetic diversity. And we also have about 40 more young pine trees in our nursery that we were planning to either use for our Living Collection or, if needed, could be mobilized for restoration on the island.
DETROW: Yeah. I'm wondering if you had conversations in recent days of whether those projects take on a new significance?
SCHNEIDER: They absolutely do. I mean, when we plan for long-term conservation through seed banking or conservation living collections, we look at it as building an insurance policy against extinction or catastrophes like this. And so it's a policy we hope we don't have to cash in, but we have what's needed to do some important recovery if that's what it comes to. And for the pine trees, it remains to be seen. We need to get on the ground and look at the trees, how they did after the fire. And there could even be delayed mortality over the next couple of years. So we'll be working closely with our collaborators at Channel Islands National Park to understand the situation as time goes forward.
DETROW: What's the first thing you're going to be looking for when you get out there yourself?
SCHNEIDER: Oh, gosh. In addition to the Torrey pines, there are some rare Dudleya that were impacted by the fire. So these are sort of small succulent plants. One of the common names is live-forever. There's one in particular called the munchkin Dudleya that also only occurs on Santa Rosa Island. And its entire population is within the path of the fire. And they probably will not fare very well if they burn. But they occur in pretty rocky habitat where there isn't a lot of neighboring vegetation. So my hope is that as the fire passed by that they didn't really burn and smolder, but they maybe got just sort of licked by the fire and that they'll be OK. But that's one in particular that I'm really thinking about.
DETROW: That's Heather Schneider of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Thank you for the work you're doing and thanks for talking to us about it.
SCHNEIDER: Thanks for helping to spread the message.
(SOUNDBITE OF J. COLE AND KENDRICK LAMAR SONG, "FORBIDDEN FRUIT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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