"Save the shrubs" doesn't resonate with people the way "save the redwoods" does. Yet chaparral and coastal sage scrublands are as defining a feature of California's landscape as the ancient giants of the North Coast forests.

Like many Californians, I grew up ignorant of my natural surroundings. I took for granted the woolly evergreen shrubs blanketing coastal hillsides near my high school in Pacific Palisades, so it was something of a shock to learn last year that chaparral and coastal sage scrub are disappearing from southern California. Foothills that used to be carpeted with ceanothus and other flowering shrubs are now dirt mounds with rashes of poverty grass and tarweed. The major agent of destruction has been wildfire caused by human actions.

Large, high-intensity wildfires are a natural feature of the region and in fact are essential to the propagation of some shrubs. Now, however, they occur too often for the brush to recover.

On January 8, 2008, biologists Richard Halsey and Bill Howell took me along on tours of fire scars in San Diego County, where 40 percent of the chaparral and coastal sage scrub had burned at least once in the previous four years. Two months earlier, wildfires had scorched more than half a million acres, and 97 percent of that terrain was scrublands. The fire perimeter spanned seven counties and four national forests, stretching as far north as Malibu and as far south as Tecate, Mexico, and as far east as San Bernardino and Agua Dulce near Santa Clarita.

Hellhole Canyon Burns Again
We set out from Halsey's house in Escondido as the sun was beginning to dissipate the morning mist. It had rained for three days, the first heavy rainfall since the latest wildfires, and the two biologists were eager to see how the chaparral was faring. Halsey is the founder of the California Chaparral Institute, a nonprofit association of scientists, wildland firefighters, and educators that promotes understanding and respect for this ecosystem. Howell, his friend and colleague, taught biology for 30 years in the San Diego County School District and for the past 15 years has taught outdoor education programs for local trail guides. He wrote a chapter of Halsey's book Fire, Chaparral, and Survival in Southern California.

Our first destination was Hellhole Canyon Open Space Preserve, a 1,700-acre wildland hemmed in by suburbs northeast of the town of Valley Center. Almost the entire preserve (95 percent) had burned in October 2003, and parts of it had burned again four years later.

Parking in a dirt lot peppered with ash and a blackened telephone pole, Halsey was relieved to see patches of chaparral that had survived both fires. Much of the brush was charred, but the worst fire damage we saw was across the canyon on 3,881-foot Rodriguez Mountain, which looked denuded. It was eerily quiet; there were no leaves to rustle and no creatures to rustle them.

Halsey walked down a sandy slope, through dry brush and scorched spots, his forest green chinos and blue T-shirt a patch of color against the bleak landscape. Flames had stripped the shrubs, leaving only charred branches, spiked like pitchforks. Wisps of ash on the black soil hinted of animals killed by the fire.

Unlike forests, scrublands burn to the ground in a fire. To survive, chaparral plants have evolved two regeneration strategies. Some, including ceanothus, are obligate seeders: they depend on the fire's intense heat or chemicals to break their seeds' dormancy and allow germination. Others, such as mountain mahogany, toyon, wild hyacinth, and most manzanita species, store energy in their roots and resprout from stumps. But now, all too often seedlings don't have time to mature and throw off seeds before they are incinerated again, and resprouting from stumps uses up so much of the stored energy that plants may not be able do it if they are burned more often than every 15 years, Halsey explained.

Howell spotted two bright green stalks with needle-like leaves at the base of a crown of roasted twigs. It was a chamise stump, sprouting. Chamise is among plants that use both strategies, obligate seeding and resprouting, "and maybe that has something to do with the fact that chamise is the most common chaparral shrub around," he said.

Nearby, Halsey was snapping photos of a short crown of charred branches. "This is a ceanothus, a four-year-old seedling, dead," he said. "So stuff was trying to come back and it got hammered again," Howell explained. "The seeds came up with the first fire and everything was fine, but before they could mature and give back to the seedbank, they got burned again."

"What starts happening now, you see, you eliminate the obligate seeding species, the ones that require fire cues, because that thing is never throwing off enough seeds," Halsey continued. "It's gone and there's no recovering from this." He worries that other obligate seeders, such as species of manzanita, could also die off here.

With shrubs gone, non-native grasses may well take over. All but five percent of California's perennial grasses have been replaced by shorter-lived and shallower-rooted European species which firefighters call "flash fuels." They ignite more easily than the native shrubs, many of which have waxy evergreen leaves that seal in moisture. Their roots don't hold soil as well as the shrubs' deep roots do, leaving burned areas susceptible to erosion, nor do they support the wealth of wildlife that thrives in shrubs. Unlike native grasses, they die in the spring, prolonging the fire season. And because they can survive an annual fire cycle, they can burn every year, carrying fire to scrublands and homes.

We gloomily considered the possibility that this hillside we were looking at could soon become as barren as Rodriguez Mountain.

Learning to See Differently
On March 28, 2008, I met with Richard Hawkins, then chief fire and aviation officer at Cleveland National Forest, for a tour of the San Pasqual Valley and San Dieguito River near Escondido, which burned in the October 2007 Witch and Guejito fires.

Hawkins was driving a white Ford Expedition, with green racing stripes and a green U.S. Forest Service shield on its sides, and his uniform matched the truck: green chinos and a khaki shirt with a Forest Service shield on the sleeve. With his close-cropped blond hair and wild bushy mustache, he fit my image of a forest ranger and firefighter.

During his 30-year career, Hawkins served in all five of California's national forests and on hundreds of fires, and now he was ready to retire. "I'm finding that it's becoming so stressful when the wind blows that I'm actually sick to my stomach with stress, and it's just gonna kill me," he told me. "I just can't do this anymore."

Hawkins knows the chaparral and he appreciates it. Steering his truck north on Highway 78 through the San Pasqual Valley, passing whitethorns with purple blossoms, he explained how, with the deep-rooted shrubs gone, nothing holds the soil in place, and nothing catches rainwater or keeps pollutants from flowing downstream and into the ocean. Stormwater that would have filtered down into the ground begins to cascade over pavement, carrying spilled oil, detergents, solvents, pesticides, fertilizers, and pet excrement into storm drains.

After San Diego's October 2003 Cedar Fire, 49 percent of the tree canopy and 73 percent each of chaparral and coastal sage was lost, according to a study by the nonprofit organization American Forests. The researchers, who employed satellite imagery, calculated that stormwater runoff within the fire scar increased by 12.6 million cubic feet and estimated the value of retaining this additional stormwater at $25 million.

Yet despite the benefits it provides, Californians have long viewed the brush as their enemy, and they continue to blame it for wildfires. Early settlers and cattlemen used to torch it to clear the land for homesteads and grazing, until they came to realize that by doing so they were inviting erosion, flooding, and the drying up of springs and streams.

When the Forest Service launched an educational campaign to persuade people that deeply rooted shrubs were needed to preserve the watershed and a year-round water supply for the cities, many scoffed. "The Forest Service was the environmental ‘wacko' of that time," Hawkins said. Eventually, however, the Cleveland National Forest was established toward these ends, with homesteaders and ranchers' support. This national forest is 88 percent chaparral and related shrublands. Halsey suggests it be renamed the "Cleveland National Chaparral Recreation Area" so people will better understand their native habitat. The "forest" misnomer applies to Los Padres and Angeles National Forests as well. There too, shubs vastly outnumber the trees.

Who's to Blame?
Today the conflict over chaparral pits conservationists and resource agencies, who are trying to protect it, against homeowners and elected officials who demonize it.

Halsey and others are campaigning for more sensible land use practices to make life safer for homeowners and firefighters and also for natural communities. He publishes an e-mail newsletter, The Chaparralian, and teaches natural history to school and community groups. "My gig is trying to get people to appreciate the ecosystem," he said. But that's still a tough sell.

On July 27, 2008, after the Basin Complex Fire burned 220,000 acres and destroyed 27 houses in Monterey County, the Carmel Pine Cone opined: "Unfortunately, if the Coastal Commission persists in protecting maritime chaparral from being cleared, it also won't be long before a lot more homes go up in smoke." In response, Coastal Commission spokeswoman Sarah Christie observed that residents chose to buy and build homes in a fire-prone region adjacent to nature preserves, and that "maritime chaparral, like the San Diego coast sage scrub, are not just fire-prone, they are fire-dependent. They have evolved over a millennium to require fire to regenerate. They have to burn, they will burn."

As I rode along Highway 78 with Hawkins, he pointed to the road's pastel-green shoulders. After burning, they had been sprayed with a mix of hydromulch and wildflower seeds. "That stuff's just for show," he said. "It won't do much to hold the soil, but at least it's native wildflowers."

After the Cedar Fire in October 2003, Burned Area Emergency Response teams broadcast 43,000 pounds of ryegrass seed across San Diego County. The purpose was to get some roots down quickly, to keep soil in place. But studies later showed that the ryegrass did not significantly reduce post-fire erosion. What it did do was to speed the conversion of scrublands to grasslands. Ryegrass helped spread a 1980 fire on Otay Mountain in San Diego County, which destroyed the chaparral stand there.

"If Californians lose native plants they lose native wildlife too," Hawkins said.

One large songbird, the coastal cactus wren, has been listed as a California species of special concern. It nests in prickly pear cacti, protected against predators by the sharp spines, and these cacti are being destroyed by the frequent chaparral wildfires. Ornithologists warn that the wren could disappear from Pacific slopes within a decade if frequent fires continue.

A Force of Nature
In fall the elements in southern California align to make the perfect firestorm. After months without rain, hot and dry Santa Ana winds blow west through the canyons toward the ocean. High pressure in the Great Basin pushes the winds toward a low-pressure area off the southern California coast. As the winds move from higher to lower elevations and squeeze through narrow canyons, compression heats and speeds them up, often to 50 miles per hour and faster. During October 2007's Witch Fire, locals in the San Pasqual Valley reported wind gusts of over 100 miles per hour. The fire jumped right over Interstate 15 as it blazed west.

Santa Ana winds send smoke from blazing scrublands out to the Pacific Ocean. Ash settles on the water, and eventually to the seafloor. Scott A. Mensing, a professor of geography at the University of Nevada, Reno, and two colleagues traced charcoal on the sea floor off the Santa Barbara coast to ash from burning scrublands. They carbon-dated it and, correlating their findings with other indicators such as pollen, reconstructed a 560-year record of Santa Ana fires. They found traces of at least 20 large fires in the Santa Barbara region during that period.

After researching charcoal records from the seafloor and the state's fire records, scientists have concluded that these large Santa Ana fires are a natural feature of the landscape.

No one knows how much chaparral and coastal sage scrub has been converted to grassland because of human-caused wildfires. The natural vegetation of California's coastal ranges is scrublands, yet as of 2004, Jon E. Keeley, research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, stationed at Sequoia National Park, estimated that grasslands dominated by nonnative plants covered 25 percent of the coastal ranges. He is working with other ecologists to determine how many acres of scrubland were lost during the 20th century; they expect to have results in a couple of years.

"What has changed today is not the size or intensity of fires, but rather the size and distribution of the human population in the region," Keeley told the Subcommitee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations on November 27, 2007. "Since nearly all of our fires are started directly or indirectly by people, there is reason to believe that we can have a real impact through more focused attention on fire prevention strategies."

Fire ecologists have come to see Santa Ana fires as natural disasters akin to earthquakes or 100-year floods. Governments do not do battle with earthquakes or floods, they mitigate their potential damage using zoning, building codes, and other tools.

Hawkins and other fire professionals already understand this. They see wind-driven fires as unstoppable forces of nature, like earthquakes. Yet the public expects firefighters to crush wildfires using air tankers, helicopters, and, in firefighter parlance, other "heavy metal."

"The news media and elected officials fail to recognize that no number of aircraft can possibly put out a wind-driven fire; it's never been done, it never will be. It's not even safe for the aircraft to be up there," said Hawkins. "It's pretty maddening. It's the top frustration for myself and most fire generals as we retire, that we were not able in our careers to get the news media and elected officials to believe us."

However, because most wildfires on California's southern coast are caused by people, people can also prevent them from happening. "For the guys on the fire engines, the helicopters, the aircraft, and so on, they don't live for fire prevention, they live to put them out once they start," said Hawkins. But planners, developers, homeowners, and every citizen passing through dry flammable lands can play a role in protecting this native ecosystem.

Preventive measures include: burying power distribution lines as part of routine maintenance; investing in stronger investigation and law enforcement programs to prevent arson; doing more to educate people about the dangers of cigarettes, sparks from heavy machinery, and unattended campfires; and cutting fire breaks, building cinderblock walls, or spraying fire retardant along the shoulders of highways and county roads.

Most important, land use practices need to change to minimize the movement of development into wildlands, or at least to build more safely.

Building in Firetraps
"I'll tell people straight out, ‘I'm the antichrist of the American dream,'" Hawkins said. "I'm a fire chief that doesn't believe anybody should live on their own five acres, that we should live like the Indians did, all tightly compacted into a village surrounded by an unburnable belt of green vegetation, so the fires can just burn around us."

Americans jealously guard their freedom to build wherever they want--even if it's in a natural pathway for fire. Building in passes or saddles is dangerous because air speeds up as it is squeezed through them. Houses that sit directly above a canyon are especially vulnerable.

"You get this venturi effect," said Halsey, who has trained as a volunteer firefighter. "Wind flying over the mountain creates a low pressure zone, pulling all the heat, embers, and what-not right up the canyon and through the saddle."

Firefighters watch in dismay and disbelief as homes rise up again over the charred footprints of those that have burned. The 2006 Esperanza Fire, started by an arsonist and spread by Santa Ana winds, took the lives of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters who were trying to save a house that was on top of a canyon.

"We're the land of the free, so build where you want to build," said Halsey. "On the other hand, don't expect firefighters to risk their lives because of your stupidity."

The back-to-back fires in southern California have galvanized communities to adopt more fire-safe building codes. Many new subdivisions are building in fire-safe features. After my visit to Hellhole Canyon with Halsey and Howell, we stopped at a new subdivision, Eureka Springs, in Escondido, where freshly painted pastel bungalows popped out against the background of brown mountains. A 100-foot fuel modification zone separated the homes from the chaparral. After a long silence, Halsey said: "I'm impressed."

Building codes for roofing construction and attic venting have improved. The vents in these houses are designed to prevent embers from blowing into attics. "The number-one cause for homes to ignite are embers," Halsey said. "Embers can sit smoldering for hours, even days, which means that even after the wildfire is under control, more houses are lost."

A chain-link fence ran the length of the tract, parallel to the hills. Beyond the fence, the native plants were irrigated, so they wouldn't dry out. A park was located along the community's edge rather than in the center, to keep fires at bay and give firefighters defensible space. "There's no reason to evacuate this place at all," Halsey said.

A few minutes later, we drove by a hillside mansion that sent him into a fit. For 400 feet around the house, the slopes had been given a buzz cut. "That's obscene," Halsey said. "That's not a fuel modification zone," Howell added, "that's a moat."

Some insurance companies demand 1,000 feet of brush clearance around a house. Homeowners who comply raze large swaths of native shrubs.

"We're building safer communities," Halsey said. "However, we're still building some homes in unsafe areas. To make them safe, the resources damage we're causing is inexcusable. I see 500 feet of clearance as not worth the house."

It took millions of years for native shrubs and wildlife to adapt to California's climate and fire cycle. They are the state's most common plant community. But it has taken humans less than a century to alter the fire regime so much that native plants and animals cannot keep pace. Whether we like it or not, Californian's past and future are tangled up in the thorny scrub of manzanita, black sage, and other native shrubs. With the conversion of shrubs to grasses, wildland fires are likely to become even more frequent.

Joseph Sorrentino, an independent journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area, began his research on chaparral and wildfire as a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder during 2007-08. His articles have appeared in High Country News and other publications.

A new edition of Richard W. Halsey's Fire, Chaparral, and Survival in Southern California has just been published by Sunbelt Publications (www.sunbeltbooks.com). It includes lessons learned from the 2007 fires.