California is losing its oaks. One man is planting 10,000, including in tree-scarce Altadena
This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.
See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.
Set us as preferred Ten thousand times, Jim Crouch has picked up an acorn.Ten thousand times, he’s planted that acorn.
And 10,000 is about the number of oak seedlings he’s entrusted to the hands of people who pledged to care for the tree that has become his mission and obsession.It began after he retired.
For years, he’d been a classroom science teacher in suburban San Diego County, and now, with that chapter behind him, the trees have become his life.He hopes to meaningfully contribute to the regrowth of burned Altadena.
California has Thousand Oaks, Sherman Oaks, Oak Park, Fair Oaks, even Oakland.That’s just in English.
Consider Encino, Encinitas and Paso Robles.They paint a picture of a California covered in oaks.
But many regions have lost their oak canopy.Some trees succumbed to insects after being weakened by drought.
Some were cut for developments, some were cut down illegally.Some oaks have been cut after fire.
Crouch witnessed this loss.He felt it.
He took to collecting acorns — the seeds of oak trees.He planted them in deep pots.
For the first eight years, he was a one-man operation working out of his backyard He began handing off the seedlings to others.Then many seedlings, to many others.
He began opening small nurseries, staffed by volunteers.He named his organization Re-Oak California after a group in the Bay Area with the same name.
His motivation “started with climate, but then I learned you can’t do anything better for nature than protect the best keystone species.” Oaks support a wide range of organisms, anchoring entire ecosystems, and also serve the vital task of storing carbon on a warming planet.In a kind of treasure hunt, Crouch gathers all the acorns on private lands.
He uses a hunting app to identify who owns which patch of remote land, then mails the property owner a lett...