LOS ANGELES MEGA-FIRE: The Tragic Consequence of Protecting Shrubs Before People

Don't Kill Them, They're Cute!

 

LOS ANGELES MEGA-FIRE: The Tragic Consequence of Protecting Shrubs Before People:

In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began replacing nearly 100-year-old power line poles cutting through Topanga State Park, when the project was halted within days by conservationists outraged that federally endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants had been trampled during the process.

…But, after an amateur botanist hiking through the park during the work saw the harm done to some of the park’s Braunton’s milkvetch — a flowering shrub with only a few thousand specimens remaining in the wild — and complained, the project was completely halted, Courthouse News Service reported.

Instead of fire-hardening the park, the city — which the state said had undertaken the work without proper permitting — ended up paying $2 million in fines and was ordered by the California Coastal Commission to reverse the whole project and replant the rare herb.

That work saved about 200 Braunton’s milkvetch plants — almost all of which have now likely been torched in the wildfires that consumed Topanga Canyon, along with nearly 24,000 acres (37 square miles) of some of LA’s most sought-after real estate.

The LAWDP had crews and equipment there, and yet the whining of a virtue-signalling “expert” stopped fire prevention.

I am beyond angry now, and there are no words that can adequately express my rage.