After 150 years, wolves back in southern California — thanks to wildfire

Wildfires don’t “destroy” the landscapes they burn through.

Wildfires can kill trees, vegetation, and occasionally wildlife. Flames can burn down homes and businesses in towns and neighborhoods. They can even level entire city blocks.

But wildfires don’t “destroy” acres of land. More often than not, fire paves the way for something new to take root; to grow back.

A new thing has taken root in the burn scar of southern California’s 2021 Windy Fire. The lightning-caused wildfire, which burned just north of the 2016 Cedar Fire east of Porterville, burned nearly 100,000 acres of the Tule River Indian Reservation and the Sequoia National Forest, killing an estimated 3 to 5 percent of the world’s giant sequoia population.

Windy Fire burn scar, NPS photo
Windy Fire burn scar, NPS photo

A keystone species — an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem — is calling the fire area home again, 150 years after being hunted and driven out. A pack of gray wolves, one adult female and four cubs, has been seen in the area, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). The pack is officially the state’s southernmost wolf pack and is more than 200 miles from the nearest separate wolf pack.

“CDFW investigated the reported location, found wolf tracks and other signs of wolf presence, and collected 12 scat and hair samples from the immediate area for genetic testing,” according to the agency. “The new pack consists of at least one adult female, who is a direct descendant of California’s first documented wolf in the state in recent history.”

This image is the first photo of the pack’s adult female:

Southern California wolf
Southern California wolf photo by Michelle Harris, Colibri Ecological Consulting

While the wolves’ return to the area is historically and ecologically significant, wolves finding home in a burn scar is reportedly a common occurrence, according to an article from Scientific American.

A lack of trees allows more sunlight to hit the soil and causes plants to sprout. The plants attract deer and other species, offering wolves ample eating opportunities. Burn scars can also act as prime den sites for wolves, with clear forests offering less obstructed views of their surroundings, intruders, and predators. And wolves aren’t the only animals to take advantage of a post-wildfire landscape.

“Other animals, such as wild turkeys, are attracted to areas soon after fire because they forage on seeds and invertebrates on the ground in the blackened areas,” said Chris Moorman, a professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at NC State University. Low-intensity prescribed fires can also increase abundance and diversity of certain plant species in forest understories.

west of Kernville

California this year got off easy — SO FAR

The acreage burned to date in California is less than a third of the state’s 5-year average, according to Cal Fire, and experts attribute the lower numbers to the historic winter storms and a record snowpack in the Pacific Southwest. But those “atmospheric river” storms resulted in huge fuels growth that could, with gusty autumn winds, mean wildfires into November or even December.

“Now is not the time for people to let their guard down,” said Brian Newman, assistant chief of Cal Fire’s Amador-El Dorado Unit. “We still have fire season ahead of us before we get into winter rains that would finally end it.”

Rim Fire, 2013. Inciweb photo
2013 Rim Fire, inciweb photo.

California’s dry, windy, and hot weather conditions from spring through late autumn can produce moderate to severe wildfires. Pre-1800, when the area was much more forested and the ecology also much more resilient, 4.4 million acres of forest and shrubland burned each year. California land area totals about 100 million acres; since 2000 annual burned acreage has ranged between 90,000 acres (0.09 percent of the state), and 1,590,000 acres (1.59 percent).  During the 2020 wildfire season alone, over 8,100 fires contributed to the burning of nearly 4.5 million acres of land.

According to the Sacramento Bee, with 317,191 acres burned so far this year, that’s under 30 percent of the 5-year average of 1.2 million acres for the same year-to-date period. Even though this season’s totaled a “normal” number of new fires, the extra precipitation and cool nights kept the acreage down. Without a dramatic weather change in the next couple of months, California will be experiencing its second straight year of mild wildfire season.

Smith River Complex
Nighttime on the Smith River Complex, inciweb photo by Adan Castillo Uribe.

Last year, fewer than 363,000 acres burned. This year’s largest fire, the Smith River Complex near the Oregon border, totaled 95,017 — under 100,000 acres. In 2020 approximately 4.3 million acres burned, and in 2021, 2.6 million acres. Climate scientists are confident that warming temperatures have increased the severity and length of fire seasons, but many hesitate to actually attribute California’s mild 2023 wildfire season to climate change. “I tend not to give much credence to the idea that single events and single summers or winters can be ascribed to climate change,” said Hugh Safford, chief scientist of Vibrant Planet and faculty at the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy.

“There’s no question that climate warming is having a major impact on expanding the fire season and increasing severity,” he said. “But California has the highest inter-annual variability and precipitation of any state in the United States. It is normal to go from a record wet year to a record — or nearly record — dry year, and that’s just the way it is.”

Mosquito Fire Sept. 2022According to the Daily MailPatrick T. Brown, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, says he deliberately omitted a key fact in a climate change piece recently published to ensure that editors would run it — the fact that 80 percent of wildfires are human-caused. Brown gave as an example a Nature paper he recently authored, “Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California.” Brown said the paper focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior — but ignores other key factors.

He said academic journals now reject papers that don’t “support certain narratives” and said the media focus on climate change as the root cause of wildfires — including the recent devastating fires in Hawaii. Brown wrote in a piece for The Free Press that this distorts a great deal of climate science research.

But the climate models seen by Erwan Monier, associate professor of climate change impacts at UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, make him predict that this upcoming year’s combination of a strong El Niño and warmer ocean temperatures could mean another wet year. “This is most likely the configuration that will control California’s climate this winter,” he said, “and will have implications for the next wildfire season. Because if we have another very wet winter, that means we’ll have even more moisture that could again lead to mild fires next year.”

Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify.
What leading researchers in climate change effects (wildfire et al.) have found, though, lines up with what firefighters observe in the field:
      • We already see effects that scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves.
      • Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify.

Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate, driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, are already creating widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner. Wildfires and fire seasons are just a piece of the many changes that are coming — changes that are here now.

California insurance rules change

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said this week that insurance companies in the state will soon be allowed to factor in climate risks including wildfires in their insurance rates — if they increase their underwriting in at-risk areas to wean consumers off state-funded coverage.

Reuters reported that in the last year or two, seven of the state’s top 12 insurers have paused or restricted new business, including State Farm and Liberty Mutual, and the government’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, intended as an insurer of last resort, has grown to a 3 percent share of California’s market.

Dixie Fire at Greenville, CA, 2021
Firefighters on the Dixie Fire at Greenville, CA, 2021. Jay Walter.

“We are at a major crossroads on insurance after multiple years of wildfires and storms intensified by the threat of climate change,” Lara said.

Unlike other states, according to an ABC News report, California does not allow insurance companies to consider current or future risks when setting the rate for an insurance policy. Companies can consider only what’s happened on a property in the past to set the price.

And insurers say that restriction makes it difficult to accurately price the risk.

On Thursday, Lara said California will write new rules to let insurers look to the future when setting their rates. “Modernizing our insurance market is not going to be easy or happen overnight,” he said. “We are in really unchartered territory and we must make difficult choices when the world is changing rapidly.”

The rule change is not all good news — it could mean higher rates for homeowners who have already seen dramatic increases. Eight insurance companies in California have requested increases of at least 20 percent this year, according to the California Department of Insurance.

Harvey Rosenfield, the author of a 1988 ballot proposition that regulates insurance rates, said Lara’s announcement “will dramatically increase homeowner and renter insurance bills by hundreds or even thousands of dollars.”

El comisionado de Seguros de California, Ricardo Lara, dijo esta semana que a las compañías de seguros del estado pronto se les permitirá tener en cuenta los riesgos climáticos, incluidos los incendios forestales, en sus tarifas de seguro, si aumentan su suscripción en áreas de riesgo para que los consumidores dejen de recibir cobertura financiada por el estado.

Reuters informó que en el último año o dos, siete de las 12 principales aseguradoras del estado han detenido o restringido nuevos negocios, incluyendo State Farm y Liberty Mutual, y el Plan de Acceso Justo a los Requisitos de Seguro (FAIR, por sus siglas en inglés) del gobierno, pensado como una aseguradora del último año. resort, ha crecido hasta alcanzar una cuota del 3 por ciento del mercado de California.

California’s becoming uninsurable

Several major insurance companies have stopped accepting California homeowners for new policies because of growing wildfire risks. As the number of fires in the state increases and other factors escalate, insurance companies worry about the risk — and the expense.

In 2022 there were over 5,000 wildfires, according to Cal Fire, that burned about 118,000 acres. Already this year 4,337 fires have burned over 114,560 acres.

Residents in high-risk fire areas or hurricane regions need homeowners’ insurance — and lenders require it. No insurance, no home loan. More people are moving into the interface, costing insurance companies too much to repair and replace houses while battling inflation, said Janet Ruiz with the Insurance Information Institute. Two insurance giants withdrew from California’s home insurance marketplace, explaining that increasing wildfire risk and soaring construction costs have resulted in their decisions to stop writing new policies in the state. State Farm announced last week it would stop accepting applications for all business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance, according to the Associated Press. The company cited inflation, a challenging reinsurance market, and rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.

“We take seriously our responsibility to manage risk,” State Farm said. “It’s necessary to take these actions now to improve the company’s financial strength.”

Unlike heavyweights State Farm and Allstate, which declined to sign new homeowners in the state, AmGUARD and Falls Lake will also drop their existing policyholders.

Allstate, another insurance powerhouse, announced in November it would pause new policies for homeowners, condos and commercial properties in California to protect current customers.

Homeowners may have to turn to the California FAIR Plan, which provides basic fire coverage, if they aren’t able to find an insurer that will cover fire expenses. The high-risk pool known as the FAIR Plan is not a government entity or a state program. Taxpayers do not fund the FAIR Plan — it’s supported by all carriers licensed to do business in California, which spreads the risk among all the insurance carriers. Because the FAIR Plan is a high-risk policy, people should expect to pay more than they would for a standard homeowner policy.

The San Francisco Standard reported last week that two more companies quietly left the California market, further narrowing options for those trying to insure their home or purchase one with a mortgage.

AmGUARD Insurance — a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance Companies — will withdraw its homeowners and personal umbrella programs, and Falls Lake Insurance will also end its homeowners program. Both companies made the announcements July 21 in little-noticed filings submitted to the state regulator. AmGUARD and Falls Lake are the latest insurers to end or limit their business in the state during the past year.

Unlike heavyweights State Farm and Allstate, which declined to sign new homeowners in the state, AmGUARD and Falls Lake will also drop their existing policyholders. Safeco plans to drop 950 policies in October in San Francisco and the East Bay.

An SFGATE report noted that State Farm held the most policies in the California property market in 2021, and the company experienced about a 60 percent loss that year.

 

State Farm: No new California homeowners’ policies

UPDATE 06/02/2023 — Allstate and Farmers join State Farm in denying new homeowner policies in California. State Farm quit selling new homeowner policies on Saturday, and now a second major carrier, Allstate Insurance, has confirmed it ended new homeowners’ policies in the state last year. On top of that, ABC-7 News reported that Farmers Insurance is now limiting policies for new customers. All three companies are still serving existing customers, and more than 100 other companies are still issuing new homeowners’ policies, but homeowners across the state will have a tougher time buying coverage.

State Farm will no longer provide home insurance to new California customers because of wildfire risks and increased construction costs. The company quit accepting new applications for business and personal lines and casualty insurance in California, USA TODAY reported.

California construction costs
Estimation QS
Building Cost Estimating, Construction, Outdoor Projects and Activities

State Farm said it will still work with the California Department of Insurance and lawmakers and will still serve existing customers.

The Oregonian reported that last year, California became the first state to require insurance premium discounts for those with wildfire protection safeguards at homes or businesses. That change was in response to soaring insurance costs for customers in high-risk areas.

“State Farm General Insurance Company made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market,” the company said in a statement.

Top ten states by acres burned
Top ten states by acres burned, 2016-2020.

CNN reported that scientists and California officials blame the climate crisis for the intensity of fire seasons. About 25 percent of the state’s forestland burned in the last 10 years — more than triple the previous decade.

The factors behind Illinois-based State Farm’s move are beyond the agency’s control, Michael Soller with the California Department of Insurance said. State Farm, with its affiliates, is the largest provider of auto and home insurance in the U.S.

California’s ALERT camera network now publicly accessible

Cal Fire and other agencies are using a network of over 1,000 cameras across California to track wildfires — and now the public can access the network, too. FOX News reports that the University of California San Diego and state fire agencies have partnered to launch a public website for people to view live camera feeds from across the state.

ALERTCalifornia camera network

ALERTCalifornia uses a network of more than 1,000 live cameras to track fires. “We’re trying to understand the impacts, the cascading disasters after these events,” said Dr. Neal Driscoll, a professor of geology and geophysics at the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. “I’m a professor. I study earthquakes, I make sensors, and here these sensors lend themselves to other events, such as atmospheric rivers and wildfires.”

View live feeds here: cameras.alertcalifornia.org

As the ALERTCalifornia camera network grows in size and sophistication, UC San Diego researchers are using new technology to study natural disaster patterns in the West. ALERTCalifornia provides state-of-the-art technology supporting data-driven decisions to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters. Based at the University of California San Diego, ALERTCalifornia is a public safety program focused on fires and other natural disasters featuring a world-class camera network.

“These cameras are on mountaintops that we can access, and so if we get a 911 call from someone reporting smoke, we can — one click away — just get on the computer and see if there is actually any smoke in the area,” said Capt. Brent Pascua, PIO with Cal Fire. “We can use multiple cameras to pinpoint the location and get a better location as well.”

“Five or six years ago they had to send a battalion out or an aircraft to confirm ignition,” says Driscoll. “Now they can turn to our cameras. They can immediately move the camera, and image that area, and confirm ignition.” The high-definition cameras can pan, tilt and zoom, with a view as far as 60 miles on a clear day and 120 miles on a clear night, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography. New cameras were recently installed in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Madera counties since the new year.

Sutter Buttes camera today
Sutter Buttes camera today

Only fire agencies can control the movement of the cameras, which are placed on tripod platforms that can be removed seasonally with little to no impact on sensitive habitats or tribal lands. The camera network started 20+ years ago in 2000, with numerous improvements to the technology over time. The network was originally created to study earthquakes. Since then, it’s expanded to monitor fires and other natural disasters. Public access to the camera feed was launched last week.