“This would’ve been pretty deep shade in the past,” said Witter, a fire ecologist with the National Park Service.
Jerry Brown may have lifted the drought emergency last year, but thousands of trees across the Santa Monica Mountains, which stretch from Hollywood to Point Mugu, have been unable to recover from years spent with little or no rain.
Rosi Dagit, a senior conservation biologist with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, said about 9,000 oaks in the range have died because of the drought.
“When you put it all together, it looks pretty bad in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the rain last year really did not make much of a difference,” Dagit said.
And while oak trees are dying, other plants and animals are affected.
Oaks are what Dagit calls a keystone species because wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains is dependent on the trees.
The remains of oaks, which Witter said can be some of the more resilient species of tree, are evidence that the drought may have done lasting damage.
Several insects attack trees when they’re weak, he said, but one insect in particular, the western oak bark beetle, is dangerous because it carries a fungus that attacks the plants’ circulatory system.
“It’s often not the insect that kills the tree but the fungus they carry with them.” The damage isn’t limited to oak trees.
Instead of covering the Santa Monicas, trees may end up growing only in the most temperate and wettest parts of the mountains, he said.