NPR Morning Edition: Wildfire burning through the Mojave Desert threatens Joshua trees
California is seeing its first major wildfire this year. The York fire is burning through the Mojave Desert Preserve on the border of California and Nevada, burning through a forest of endangered Joshua trees. Caleigh Wells from member station KCRW joins us now. Caleigh, California had a really, really wet winter. So why are we seeing such a huge fire in California's southern desert?
CALEIGH WELLS, BYLINE: I mean, the short answer is climate change, because that causes this really extreme weather. And then this really extreme weather causes extreme fires. And so this year's flavor of extreme weather was we got way more rain than normal, and now we're in a much longer heat wave than normal. And, you know, this is the recipe that we've all heard before. We've got more plants from all this rain. Then we've got this big hot heat wave that dries all those plants out. Then you add in some strong winds. It creates perfect fire conditions. And unfortunately, the Joshua trees are kind of just sitting there in the crosshairs.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, Joshua trees are treasured here in California. What does it mean for them? What does this fire mean for them?
WELLS: Well, it kind of just means pretty bad news. We had the Dome fire three years ago in this area, and it grew to about half the size of this one. But even that result was really devastating. There were 1.3 million Joshua trees that burned. And, you know, they're not like the big pine trees in northern California that can handle a certain amount of fire because of thick bark or something. These are really dry, shaggy, like, Dr. Seuss succulents with their spindly arms, and they twist up into the sky, and they burn really easily.
So then the question is, well, OK, how well do they resprout after fire? Cody Hanford told me the news there isn't great either. He's the co-executive director of a nonprofit in this area called the Mojave Desert Land Trust.
CODY HANFORD: Really low recovery, unfortunately, is what we would expect, which is just devastating because this is burning one of the best Joshua tree forests ever, in the world, that I've ever seen.