Forestry · Watershed accountability

After the fire, what kind of forest are we rebuilding?

Native trees, herbicides and public money: agency records reveal a production model—and a missing test of its watershed claims.

By William Ide · October 4, 2026 · Analysis

A burned hillside does not stay empty for long. Shrubs resprout. Grasses and wildflowers return. Young hardwoods push up through the damaged ground. To wildlife, that recovering landscape can be food, shelter and habitat. To a forester trying to establish a selected stand of conifers, some of the same plants are competition.

That difference matters. A project can successfully grow planted trees while removing native recovery. It can meet a stocking target without showing that the watershed improved. And it can be described as restoration without telling residents what chemicals were used—or whether those chemicals reached the water below.

California’s forestry agencies and project operators describe their objectives in their own records. Read those records together, and a practical question emerges: are we measuring the recovery of a forest, or the successful establishment of a timber stand?

The production objective is written down

CAL FIRE describes Board policy for demonstration forests in terms of keeping “forest crop land in a productive condition.” Its explanation of state law centers “maximum sustained production of high-quality forest products,” alongside consideration of watershed, wildlife, recreation and other values. The Board’s description of the Forest Practice Act likewise makes productivity and sustained yield explicit. [1–2]

Logging has an important place in California’s economy and history. The issue is whether the public is told plainly what a project is designed to produce, and whether its environmental claims are tested independently of timber growth.

State demonstration forests are one program, not a complete inventory of California’s forests. Federal forests operate under a different, multiple-use mandate. Nor does a “timberland” classification prove that every acre is a plantation. The records document the production approach in real operations; they do not establish its statewide acreage share. [1, 3–5]

“Native” does not answer the restoration question

A tree can be native and still be part of a plantation. Species selection, spacing, shrub control, thinning and eventual harvest determine how a stand is managed. Sierra Pacific Industries describes a business cycle of regeneration, planting, management, harvest and manufacture. A 2019 review by university and Forest Service scientists describes conventional western reforestation as dense conifer planting in grids, followed by vegetation control and thinning, and argues for more varied, resilient approaches. [6–7]

The useful questions are concrete: which plants are kept, which are killed, and how much natural regeneration is accepted? What counts as success—a diverse recovering community, a specified number of surviving conifers, or both?

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources’ March 2026 guidance discusses herbicide “targeting of oaks and shrubs like greenleaf manzanita, tanoak, and chinquapin.” It also discusses controlling Ceanothus and manzanita. These are native plants. This work is not simply the removal of invasive species. [8]

A shrub can compete with a planted pine while providing food and cover for animals. Removing it may increase other native plants; research has documented that outcome too. Plant richness, habitat structure and wildlife use are different measures, and each deserves to be assessed. [8, 24]

This is happening in Lassen and Plumas

Feather River reforestation after the Dixie Fire lists ponderosa pine, Jeffrey pine, Douglas-fir, incense cedar and rust-resistant sugar pine. All five are conifers. Its account says half of participating landowners agreed to a one-time post-planting herbicide application. That is a share of participants, not a share of treated acreage. [9]

On Lassen National Forest, Fall River Resource Conservation District describes herbicide approval for the Bald and Eiler projects after poor seedling survival, and identifies snowbrush regrowth as a challenge. Its Manzanita Chutes description explicitly identifies older pine plantations. [10]

The West Lassen Headwaters decision anticipates 120–200 planted conifers per acre with herbicides, or up to 250 without them to compensate for mortality. Its long-term surviving-tree target is lower. The same decision includes hardwood, aspen, meadow and riparian work, natural regeneration in smaller patches, and removal of some herbicide areas over water concerns. Those differences should be reported alongside the deliberate effort to establish chosen tree stocking. [11]

Public funding for spraying. Where are the water results?

CAL FIRE’s October 9, 2024 site-visit report identifies W.M. Beaty as land manager for visits to Humbug Valley and Cheney Creek under a private-land disaster-recovery agreement. CAL FIRE, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Forestry Association participated. [25]

“Pre-emergent herbicide application is being conducted in conjunction with mastication as site preparation ahead of planting.”

CAL FIRE site-visit report, October 9, 2024 [25]

The report describes planned planting at 150–180 trees per acre and filming about the grant and postfire reforestation. It closes with “No issues or concerns were noted.” But it reports no receiving-water herbicide measurements. A visit can document activities; that closing statement cannot establish that chemicals stayed on the treated land.

This record does not prove that nobody tested elsewhere or identify which particular Motor Sheep acres received reimbursement. It does show why treatment maps, payment records and laboratory reports belong beside publicly funded environmental claims.

A recovering landscape can be valuable before the trees grow

Forest Service scientists White and Long explain that severe fire can restore meadows, shrubfields and open forests with hardwood components in places where conifers expanded through fire suppression. They warn that reforestation in such places can work against ecological function. In other settings, planting can help where seed sources or climate conditions limit recovery. The decision needs a site-specific ecological basis. [12]

Research after the Dixie and Caldor fires found that seeds surviving in cones supported regeneration in some severely burned interiors. The mechanism depended on conditions and was considered an exception, rather than a general rule. It strengthens the case for surveying a site before assuming natural recovery has failed. [13]

A southwest Oregon study found more vegetation cover and bird species in early postfire stands than in intensively managed clearcuts during years two through five. It compared whole management packages, not herbicides alone, and some differences changed with stand age. The lesson is to identify the food, cover and nesting structures being removed, rather than assume planted-tree growth measures every wildlife benefit. [14]

Replanting and reburning need scrutiny

The 2019 reforestation review describes dense young plantations established after the 1987 Stanislaus fires that burned again in the 2013 Rim Fire, with rapid spread, high intensity and complete mortality in many stands. A separate 2025 northern Sierra Nevada study found higher odds of severe fire on private industrial land after accounting for weather and biophysical factors. Neither finding establishes that every plantation behaves alike or isolates the effect of an individual herbicide application. [7, 15]

Evidence also supports prescribed burning and thinning combined with burning as ways to reduce subsequent fire severity. That evidence does not automatically justify every other intervention. Each treatment needs evidence matching its claimed benefit. A plantation fire remains a wildfire; public reporting should also disclose the management history of the land that burned. [16–17]

More trees are not a water-quality measurement

Research in Yosemite’s Illilouette Creek Basin found that decades of managed wildfire produced a more open landscape, with wetter conditions in some areas that became meadow. A wider review of western forest studies found that water responses to disturbance varied: streamflow and snowpack could rise, fall or remain unchanged. Conditions and returning vegetation matter. [18–19]

Water quantity, seasonal flow, temperature, sediment and herbicide contamination are separate outcomes. An erosion inspection cannot tell us which herbicide is dissolved in a creek. Counting surviving seedlings cannot do that either.

The state already documented herbicides reaching water

The Central Valley Water Board’s 2017 information sheet records substantial hexazinone use in the Battle Creek watershed, mostly associated with postfire conifer plantation establishment. Its pilot sampling found hexazinone in all 26 samples, along with detections of other herbicides. The work had method and equipment limitations, but it documented a chemical-monitoring problem. [28]

The same document concluded that label instructions and applications had not prevented discharge of specific chemicals in that sampling experience. This was a historical assessment, not a finding about every later application. It is a clear reason to measure what happens downstream.

A proposed test was left out—and the gap remains a public question

UC Davis, working with USGS and the Central Valley Water Board, proposed EMC-2022-001: application-informed sampling for ten herbicides using four approaches, including seasonal events. November 2022 meeting minutes record staff saying all proposals could be funded as requested. The approved package nevertheless omitted 001. The minutes document concerns about its connection to the Forest Practice Rules, alongside support from other members. [21, 27]

The earlier 2021 proposal had a separate history: recommendation followed by withdrawal over indirect-cost limits. Those two decisions should not be collapsed into one. The records establish the funding choices; they do not establish a concealed motive. The unanswered question is what equivalent application-linked monitoring was implemented afterward. [20, 22]

Lahontan’s May 9, 2025 letter acknowledges that its Timber Waiver does not expressly require monitoring groundwater and surface water for herbicides and herbicide mixtures. Its effectiveness-monitoring form emphasizes visual evaluation, erosion and sediment delivery. In the Motor Sheep matter, its later response states that staff did not inspect during project implementation and explains its disputed source-attribution position. [26, 29–30]

DPR does operate environmental-monitoring programs. That fact, or a company’s statement that it monitors water, does not answer whether the relevant chemicals were sampled below a particular forestry application at the relevant time. The answers are in locations, analyte lists, reporting limits and laboratory reports. [6, 23]

Follow the application. Test the water. Publish the evidence.

California Water Monitoring Project’s starting point is practical: obtain the PURs, identify what was applied, prepare a sampling plan, then collect connected runoff and creek-bed sediment during fall rain and spring snowmelt. Each site’s application records determine its tests. Experienced local volunteers can reach remote drainages beyond maintained roads, with access arranged as needed.

We will publish laboratory reports and sample locations alongside application records, including non-detections and reporting limits. When findings warrant complaints, we will provide the evidence to regulators, guide them to the collection points and publish their investigation findings and responses. Monitoring will expand as funding and volunteers grow.

A watershed-protection claim should come with watershed evidence. Publicly funded projects should disclose what they planted, what they removed, what they sprayed and what the laboratory found downstream. That is how residents can compare a promised restoration with a measured result.

Our testing plan and laboratory prices

Read the full research report and its 30 sources (PDF)