"California’s wildfires are destroying forests faster than the state can replant them, and federal cuts are making the gap worse. One expert says the crisis is barely known — even though it could reshape half the state’s forests by 2071."
"A windowless warehouse on the outskirts of Davis shelters pieces of California’s forests.
Icy air swirls and fogs around 42,000 pounds of seeds — the past and the future of these trees, frozen in cardboard boxes. It smells like the woods on a snowy day.
“This is like the mothership of forestry in California right here,” said Stewart McMorrow, staff chief for wildfire resilience at Cal Fire, standing outside the heavy metal door of the state seed bank at Cal Fire’s Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis.
Private landowners especially rely on these seeds — some now more than a half-century old — to reforest property destroyed by wildfire.
At the pace California is burning, it’s nowhere near enough."
