CalMatters: California can’t (currently) replant its forests fast enough to keep up with wildfires

“This is like the mothership of forestry in California right here,” said Stewart McMorrow, staff chief for wildfire resilience at Cal Fire, standing outside the heavy metal door of the state seed bank at Cal Fire’s Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis. Private landowners especially rely on these seeds — some now more than a half-century old — to reforest property destroyed by wildfire. At the pace California is burning, it’s nowhere near enough. Over the past quarter century, high-severity wildfires have burned 2.3 million acres of California’s forestland so completely that the trees are unlikely to return on their own. And 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. Read ON.