As if there weren’t enough outrages coming out of California to keep most keen observers livid, consider this: A fire prevention project at a state park currently in the midst of the Palisades blaze was stopped due to environmental concerns about a shrub.
According to reports from 2019 and 2020, not only was the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power precluded from undertaking a bulldozing project in Topanga State Park due to danger toward the Braunton’s milk vetch, but the city also had to pay nearly $2 million in fines for even starting the project.
In an August 2019 article, the Los Angeles Times reported that the LADWP had intended to bulldoze an area in the park and replace flammable wooden poles with steel ones.
“This project will help ensure power reliability and safety, while helping reduce wildfire threats,” a LADWP statement at the time read.
“These wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life.”
However, the issue was the Braunton’s milk vetch, a shrub that is down to its last 3,000 organisms in the wild. Over half are in Topanga State Park.
“A short-lived perennial in the pea family, Astragalus brauntonii, grows only in areas with calcium carbonate soils that have been disturbed by fire. Scientists say the species, which gets about 5 feet tall, has been under siege by urban development and wildfire safety projects since botanists first described it in 1903, based on specimens collected above Santa Monica, according to a federal report,” the Times noted.
The plant was discovered by a man described by the Times as “an amateur botanist and avid hiker,” David Pluenneke.
After he sent the LADWP an email about the plants on July 7, 2019, he returned to the site eight days later to find that crews had bulldozed vegetation for a new dirt fire road.
Should criminal charges be filed against LA officials?
“It’s hard not to think that if there had been blue whales and panda bears up there, they would have bulldozed them, too,” Pluenneke said.
Eventually, a murderer’s row of conservation organizations got involved: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, and the California Coastal Commission investigated the LADWP for its fire prevention efforts.
A year afterward, the city — which suspended the efforts permanently — agreed to a nearly $2 million fine over the damage to the milk vetch.
“On Wednesday, the commission approved a cease and desist order and a restoration plan that LADWP agreed to follow,” Courthouse News Service reported in November of 2020.
“The utility will pay $1.9 million for the violation and perform erosion control, reverse any grading it performed, and replant the area. LADWP will also implement long-term monitoring of the damage it caused.”
And guess where the biggest fire in Southern California is? That’s right: the Pacific Palisades region, including Topanga State Park, which has seen extensive damage.
The house of Will Rogers, the noted American social critic and performer, used to be in the area. This is what’s left of the monument:
Well, thank heavens they saved the milk vetch. Sure, as of Saturday, 27 people are dead and 31 are missing in the Palisades and Eaton fires, according to a tally by the New York Post. Over 12,000 homes and businesses have burned down and more than 40,000 acres have been scorched. But they endeavored to save the Braunton’s milk vetch, and that’s what really matters.
Unless, of course, the plant isn’t fire retardant. Then things aren’t looking so hot for the species.
Now, it’s worth noting that this one project didn’t doom the Southern California region to the hellscape we’ve seen over the past two weeks, but it’s indicative of the incompetence, mismanagement, and misplaced priorities that led to this mass tragedy.
Between poor resource management and profoundly idiotic tradeoffs which sacrificed obvious safety benefits for residents at the altar of random endangered species, this is but a drop in the outrage bucket.
It’s a pretty telling drop, however. In one of the most fire-prone parts of Los Angeles, a shrub took precedence over human life.
When it comes time to tally the ineptitude of the fire preparedness and response over the next few weeks and months, the case of the Braunton’s milk vetch in Topanga State Park should get some very warranted attention.
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