The Joshua tree is a symbol of the Mojave Desert. After all, it only grows in this region of the world. It's unique, picturesque, bizarre, resilient and a yucca, which means it's a member of the asparagus family!
Joshua trees take hundreds of years to mature and have co-evolved with the yucca moth. Because they are so fascinating, Joshua Tree National Monument was created in 1936 and became Joshua Tree National Park in October of 1994. The nearby Mojave National Preserve was also established in October of 1994 and was once home to the largest Joshua tree forest on the planet.
However, on August 16, 2020, lightning ignited the area around Cima Dome, a volcanic formation in the Mojave, the same day that six other California wildfires started. This included the August Complex Fire — California's largest recorded fire. With the state's firefighting resources battling various blazes across California, over 43,000 acres and an estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees burned in the Mojave National Preserve. It was a devastating loss.
Now, charred Joshua trees stand beneath the dry California sky. What was once a lush forest of unique desert flora in the Mojave National Preserve is now a haunting, vacant graveyard of blackened sand and skeletal trees. Could this fire have been prevented?
