Time measured in millennia, partnering with diverse flora and fauna, playing across extensive variation in soil, rainfall, sunlight, elevation, and terrain, designed California's rich natural beauty.
With such habitat diversity, closely evolved creatures like long-lived trees, fixed to one location, can find it difficult to adapt to even modest changes in temperature and moisture. Coast Live Oaks, some hundreds of years old, may find themselves rooted in ground no longer hospitable to them, and Sudden Oak Death occurs.
Refugia (plural) is an ecology term referring to locations within a distressed ecosystem where specimens are protected. If conditions return to a previous state, these specimens become a source of genetics to repopulate larger areas. A forest stand that escapes a wildfire destroying nearby trees is an example of a refugium (singular.) After the fire, the surviving stand can reseed the surrounding area.
We support the vision that humans can repair our climate. In the meantime, we will protect native oaks and related plant species at our site and other host sites.
