Beginning with Seeds: Restoration in the Wake of Wildfires
March 18, 2025 at 10:02PMLauren E. Oakes considers what it means to, and how to start the process of ecological recovery in the aftermath of the most recent California wildfires. While utter devastation may be too difficult—emotionally and financially—for some to overcome, Oakes suggests that we need to apply a climate-informed approach, one that uses a diversity of species that can withstand drier conditions. “It’s not enough to rebuild,” she writes. “We must rebuild in a way that withstands the future we’ve created.”
Twenty days after the Eaton and Palisades Fires ignited, I spoke with Nina Raj, the naturalist and gardener who’d fled her home in Altadena with her seed collection. In her requests for seed donations, she’d asked for phytoremediators, plants that remove or reduce toxins in the soil and water. Residents delivered envelopes of bush sunflower, deer weed, and telegraph weed. They donated California buckwheat, a spreading bush that grows well in dry conditions. Buckwheat also absorbs heavy metals, and its pink and cream-colored flowers attract butterflies and bees. “These plants can kickstart an ecosystem again,” she told me. “If we bring the birds back, they’ll bring more seeds, too.”
The seed libraries in Altadena still stand amid the ash and rubble. Some people take from them. Others add to them. On many streets, lone chimneys jut from the blackened land like rock spires in a desert. One seed library at an elementary school remains unscathed, but across the street, the entire block burned.
As if even the fire knew to let hope live on.
More picks from Emergence Magazine
Living in the Bones
“Heroes seek discovery, not permission. They also die.”
Wild Clocks
“Attentive to the loss of age-old ecological relationships as ‘wild clocks’ fall out of synchronization with each other, David Farrier imagines an opportunity to renew the rhythms by which we live.”
Glacial Longings
“I never considered that collapse could appear so still.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/03/18/beginning-with-seeds-restoration-in-the-wake-of-wildfires/
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