Vision Fire Symposium: Five Years Later

Date: October 10, 2000
Contact: John Dell'Osso, 415-464-5135

October 14, 2000
Dance Palace Community Center
7:00 – 9:00 pm

From its beginning on October 3rd, 1995 near Mount Vision, until containment on October 7th, the fire burned nearly 12,000 acres of private, state, and federal lands. Thirty-five mph winds quickly transformed a small fire ignited by the smoldering remains of an illegal campfire into a firestorm. Forty-four homes in the town of Inverness Park were consumed in the first twenty-four hours of the blaze. Due to the nature of the landscape and the proximity to private lands and property, the decision was made immediately to fight this fire aggressively.

Since that time, numerous scientific studies have been conducted within the Seashore, some of which have yielded unsuspecting results. This Saturday, several researchers will report on their findings five years after the Vision Fire.The presenters and their topics include:

Thomas Bruns, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
"How Fungi and Rodents Conspired to Help Bishop Pine Reestablish"

Geoffrey Geupel, Point Reyes Bird Observatory
"Songbird Response to Wildfire in Riparian Forests"

Laurel Collins, Estuary Institute
"Fluvial Geomorphic Response of Muddy Hollow Creek"

Amy David, San Francisco State University
"Northern Coastal Scrub: Pattern and Process in Post-fire Growth"

Barbara Holzman, Ph.D. & Karen Folger, San Francisco State University
"Post-fire Recovery in Bishop Pine Forest"

Jerry Powell, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
"Recovery of Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) Populations"

Gary Fellers, Ph.D. & David Pratt, USGS, Biological Resources Division
"The Vision Fire - Impacts on Mammals"

For more information, please contact Bill Shook at [phone], ext. 243.

-NPS-