Restoring a Fire-Resilient Landscape: The Hedgerow Project

By Aylara Odekova, AMLT Native Plant Propagation Program Manager

Over the course of the past year, AMLT staff, tribal members, and volunteers designed, propagated and installed a hedgerow and revegetated four acres of land at Pie Ranch as part of the Coastal Conservancy Wildfire Resilience funded project titled “Restoring a Fire-Resilient Landscape in Coastal San Mateo County”. This opportunity presented itself after the devastating CZU Fire Complex burned the land of our long-time partner and close ally, Pie Ranch.

*AMLT Native Stewards removing burned eucalyptus trees following the CZU Fires at Pie Ranch. Photo credit Jered Lawson.*

Co-founder and Executive Director of Pie Ranch, Nancy Vail, described the horrific event as well as the process that gave rise to the hedgerow. She said: “In August 2020, the CZU fires sent us running and destroyed Pie Ranch's historic farmhouse and other buildings along with neighbors' homes and thousands of acres of overgrown forests. Shortly after the fires, we walked the land together, witnessing how the destructive yet healing powers of the wildfire revealed the interconnectedness of history, land, food, and justice. We grieved, recognizing how the near erasure of Indigenous communities and their knowledge of tending the land, along with hundreds of years of colonization and poor land management decisions like planting eucalyptus groves, combined with the cumulative effects of climate change, led to these catastrophic fires destroying homes, livelihoods, plant and animal life. Because of the trust we had built and the work we had done in years prior with the AMTB/AMLT, we were able to come together and envision a collaborative, restorative path forward. We secured grants to support our vision and within a few months, tribal stewards, skilled in forestry, began taking down the burned eucalyptus trees along our riparian corridors and hillsides.”

Tall eucalyptus are expensive to remove, and dozens were often planted together as windbreaks, making the cost of removal prohibitive for many landowners. Prior to the fire, Pie Ranch had hundreds of eucalyptus trees lining the main road and choking the riparian corridor. The trees are also difficult to permanently eliminate because they grow easily and quickly and can re-sprout from seeds as well as from cut trunks.

Following the CZU fire, approximately 90 large eucalyptus were removed with the help of Community Tree Service. This past year AMLT began replacing the high fire risk eucalyptus with culturally significant native plants, such as soaproot and blue elderberry. The goal is not only to enhance fire resilience, but also to make the plants accessible to Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members as well to members of other tribal nations. Pie Ranch’s long-term sustainable landscape management plans center the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and Land Trust members’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous land stewardship practices such as removing high-fire risk invasive plants, seeding fire-resilient native plants and grasses, erosion control, and prescribed burns.

As a result of this shared vision born after the fire, AMLT played a key role in restoring and revegetating the riparian area along Green Oaks Creek as well as an ephemeral riparian zone that runs through the heart of Pie Ranch. We began this process two years ago by manually removing and bringing under control invasive plants, such as poison hemlock, thistle, and lots of annual non-native plants that proliferated after the fire.

Following the removal of invasive species, we propagated native plants and planted our first buckeyes with the first rain in the fall of 2024. Over the course of this past rain season, together with 35 volunteers we planted over 3,200 plants into the hedgerow, including 119 trees, 288 shrubs and 2,907 herbs. Amah Mutsun Tribal Band member Sophia Cordova, who also worked as part of Pie Ranch Youth Corps Crew, described her experience installing the hedgerow. She said: “It was a privilege to be able to work on the land. You can slow down and take time with the plants and connect with the environment. It helped me feel closer to my tribe. ”

Sophia’s words and sense of connection with the land resonated with our staff and our volunteers, many of whom talked about healing that comes from working with native plants and revegetating landscapes. Tess Weisbarth, a retired elementary school teacher and AMLT volunteer, shared her transformational experience. She said: “When I pulled out the non-native plants, I realized I pulled out my non-native, colonial, fear-based thinking. Now the native thinking can grow. It includes kindness, deeper listening and unconditional love for myself and for humanity. It’s just a whole new landscape out there, and I feel like I have a whole new landscape in my heart.” Tess teared up as she was talking about this opportunity. She continued: “It’s been so healing on so many levels. Knowing that I am doing this not just for myself but also for my ancestors. The native plants are established and thriving out there. It’s the same within my Earth - my heart is open and I am thriving. There is so much joy in all of this work. I work with like-minded hearts. It is so restorative and it gives me hope. The Earth knows what to do; the seeds know what to do. All we have to do is clear out the non-natives. It’s been a big two years, it’s been a really profound paradigm shift. I want more people to get out here and just see the diversity.”

Tess is pointing out an incredible accomplishment of this project with the installation of 60 different species of native plants, sourced from the local watershed. We invite you to come out to Pie Ranch and see for yourself the impact of the newly installed plants. It’s hard to say when the landscape is fully restored. All we know is that we treat every plant as kin and we continue to build our relationship with them long after they are in the ground.

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