Four months after a devastating fire scorched the Santa Monica mountains above Pacific Palisades, wildlife are returning to the area, as green shoots draw herbivores back into the blackened hills and silted canyons.
The Palisades Fire destroyed more than 23,000 acres from Pacific Palisades to Malibu, and damaged the Topanga State Park, as well as the local Temescal Gateway Park, destroying historic sites in the mountains. It will take years, and perhaps decades, for the area to recover. The fires were followed by heavy rains that caused rockfalls that buried canyons and erased hiking trails that had been enjoyed by locals for generations.
But the first green shoots had appeared in the burn scar within a month, and wildlife slowly began to return to the area. The first animals to appear on trail cameras were the emaciated survivors of the fire, including starving bobcats, coyotes, and deer. Mountain lion tracks appeared alongside muddy mountain streams, as desperate predators ventured down from the hills at night to seek water and any surviving small animals.
Yet the mountains and hills, once brown and black, are turning green, providing food for herbivores, as well as cover from prey, bringing large animals back into areas that had looked apocalyptic just a few weeks ago.
Data and evidence on wildlife in the mountains are tough to gather, but Breitbart News has obtained photos of animals, mostly deer and birds, that have returned to areas devastated by the Palisades Fire. And when those return, predators like lions and hunter/scavengers like coyotes will likely follow. Water may be harder to find, given that many rock pools were destroyed, but winter rains fed several small streams in the hills.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.