The fire that started May 15 on Santa Rosa Island burned for more than two weeks before it was fully contained on June 4. Santa Rosa is one of only two places on Earth where the Torrey pine grows wild. Closer to home, we’re still watching the 29 acres of the Reserve Extension that burned in 2024. What’s come back, what’s struggling, and what the land is telling us about its own recovery.
Fire is not new here. Coastal sage scrub and chaparral evolved with it. Periodic burns thin the plant communities, cycle nutrients back into the soil, and open ground for species that need bare mineral soil to get started. In that sense, fire is less a catastrophe than a reset. But the fires we’re seeing now are different in ways that matter.
The changing fire equation
The 2024 Extension fire burned during prolonged drought, low humidity, and strong offshore winds. These conditions are becoming more common as the regional climate shifts. Fire under these conditions burns hotter, moves faster, and does more damage to the seed banks and root systems that drive recovery.
On Santa Rosa Island, the picture is complicated further. The island’s Torrey pine population is already stressed: more isolated, less genetically diverse than the mainland trees, and now facing fire at a scale and intensity that older trees may not have encountered before. It will take years to understand the full scope of mortality and recovery there.
What we’re seeing in the Extension
In the Extension, recovery has followed a more familiar arc. Within weeks of the 2024 fire, the first post-fire pioneers showed up: coastal deerweed, bush poppy, rush rose, and snapdragons pushing through the ash. These are fire-followers, plants whose seeds are triggered by heat or smoke and are built to take advantage of open ground and the pulse of nutrients that follows a burn.
By spring 2025, the picture had filled in considerably. San Diego Natural History Museum botanists conducted a formal survey and documented 110 plant species growing within the burn area, including species that hadn’t been recorded in the reserve before. A little more than half are coming back from seed. The rest are re-sprouting from root crowns that survived the fire underground.
Our docents have been watching this play out on their regular walks, and the observations match what the botanists found: wildflowers that rarely appear in mature, closed-canopy scrub are now blooming across the burn area. Local resident Miles Wilkinson described it well: the roots of many shrubs survived, sending up new branches and leaves above the charred pre-fire growth.
For the Torrey pines, though, the story is harder. All of the 50 trees within the fire perimeter were lost. Torrey pines are a stand-replacement species that generally not survive fire, but leave open ground for new seedlings. The extension didn’t have dense Torrey pine coverage to begin with, but those losses are real. We have observed several seedlings that have recruited to the burn area, but need to conduct time-intensive surveys to locate and monitor new and surviving young trees to see if additional management action is needed.
What the trails are showing
One of the most visible consequences of the 2024 fire is what it did to the trails
After a fire when the first rains come, there is little vegetation to uptake or slow down the surface runoff. In these early months without vegetation, there can be accelerated erosion: channels cutting into previously stable surfaces, drainage structures overwhelmed, trail edges collapsing as the soil beneath them loses its structure.
This is what TPC and California State Parks have documented across the Extension’s 2.4-mile trail network. The rehabilitation project we’re funding this year, erosion control, drainage repair, trail realignment, is in large part a direct response to post-fire hydrologic changes and fall line trails that collect water. Getting the drainage right before the next winter rains is not optional. Each wet season without fixes extends the damage further into areas that are otherwise recovering.
What it all means
Fire is going to keep happening. The conditions that drive intense fire in coastal Southern California aren’t going away. What TPC and California State Parks can do is manage the landscape in ways that build resilience. For example, supporting defensible space and removing invasive species that ignite or carry fire more readily than native plants. Restoring and improving trail drainage so post-fire erosion doesn’t compound the damage. Monitoring recovering areas closely enough to catch problems early.
The 29 acres that burned in 2024 are teaching us. The plants are showing us what comes back and what needs help. The soils are showing us where the infrastructure failed and where investment is needed. The docents walking those trails every week are capturing what monitoring instruments can’t: the texture of recovery, the species that weren’t expected, the places where something seems off.
That knowledge, built slowly by people who know this place well, is how Torrey Pines stays Torrey Pines.
To support the Extension trail rehabilitation project, donate here.