![]() "This is where we're sorting all of the Joshua tree seeds, and where we store them before they go to the nursery." The nursery is a facility near Lake Mead, where rows of pots contain baby Joshua tree sprouts, ready to be transplanted into the wild. "This is our seed lab," says Christina Sanchez, a seed technician. Krystal Ramirez for NPR Seed technician Christina Sanchez stands outside the old restroom that's been converted into a seed lab, behind the historic Kelso schoolhouse. Restoration work in the desert, she explains, is not for the faint of heart. We even had a camel train packing water into these," Hughson says. "There's been hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that have participated. Others die of thirst, though volunteers and scientists at the preserve make their best efforts to water the baby seedlings. Some of the baby Joshua trees have been eaten, especially those without a cage. "Unfortunately, restoring Joshua trees is more of an art than a science, and sometimes it works out really well and sometimes it doesn't," Hughson says. In fact, in the two years this project's been underway, 80% of the roughly 1,900 Joshua trees planted in the burn scar of the Dome Fire have died. Unfortunately, this one's dead, as are many others at this site. 6 last year, and a volunteer named it Bratislava – the capital of Slovakia. She says this seedling was planted on Nov. Knight crouches down near one of the cages, and checks a numbered tag. This is where volunteers have planted baby Joshua trees, in hopes of resurrecting the century-old giants that perished here. Small chicken wire cages are scattered throughout the grove. "Kind of our own little chandelier here in the desert," Knight jokes. Krystal Ramirez for NPR Erin Knight is a biological science technician at the Mojave National Preserve. Others still stand, but they're falling to pieces the branches that once stretched up to the sky now dangle and sway eerily in the desert wind. Some of the plants have toppled to the ground. They're actively intervening with an ambitious years-long project to replant some 4,000 Joshua trees at Cima Dome.īiological science technician Erin Knight walks through a graveyard of dead Joshua trees, near the remains of an old cattle operation called Valley View Ranch. Scientists are not waiting to see what the desert becomes. "In the end," she says, "the desert is going to tell us what it's going to be and it's going to show us what it's going to be." She talks about the future of the Joshua tree and what might happen at Cima Dome as if she still assesses these seismic ecological changes at the tempo of geologic time. Then, the fire came – an unexpected destabilizing force that casts that long-term trajectory into question. The area's relatively high elevation was supposed to serve as a sort of sanctuary – a climate refuge where Joshua trees could continue to thrive amid hotter, drier conditions elsewhere in their range. Flames destroyed an estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees on Cima Dome, an area that was once the park's grandest example of dense Joshua tree woodland. The road was a firebreak during the 2020 Dome Fire. Krystal Ramirez for NPR Plant remains hang over Valley View Ranch, one of the sites that burned in the 2020 Dome Fire at Mojave National Preserve. "Then you get a major stressor like this, that just erases the chalkboard." "What we're doing here globally is we're cranking up the temperature, and here we're also cranking down the rainfall, the precipitation." Joshua trees, she explains, are having a hard time keeping up with such swift climate changes. "They're already living on the edge," Hughson says. ![]() Scroll forward in time, Hughson says, and their range shrinks: "It melts like an ice cube on a hot sidewalk." On top of that, in recent years wide-ranging wildfires are also pushing the succulents into greater peril. Models predict those warming trends will leave Joshua trees with fewer suitable places to live. Warmer, drier temperatures are already stressing the preserve's spindly Joshua trees. This latest wildfire comes as a reminder of the unpredictable future facing some of the desert's most iconic residents. "When the pinyon-juniper burns, it doesn't come back. It was a beautiful little pinyon-juniper forest up there," says Debra Hughson, who is the preserve's deputy superintendent. "Caruthers Canyon is the prettiest place we had. The moonscape is the result of a fire that burned quickly and widely, engulfing roughly 130 square miles of the preserve – including picturesque Caruthers Canyon, a boulder-strewn spot popular with campers. Krystal Ramirez for NPR A scorched Joshua tree (left) and a burned barrel cactus are remnants of the York Fire. ![]()
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