Earth Day had a special meaning this year for the Whitfield Wildlife Conservation Area.
Extensive damage left from the Big Hole Fire underscored the need to restore and maintain plant life.
"I'm so appreciative of my board of supervisors who had the courage to say, 'Hey, let's keep going,' and my staff as well, obviously," Andrew Hautzinger, district director of the Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District, told KOB 4. "Let's keep this event going; it's too important to the community and now is the time because of this unfortunate fire to kind of galvanize this conversation."
The Big Hole Fire ravaged approximately three-fourths of the conservation's 96 acres, destroying plant life and wildlife that occupies the area, KOB 4 reported.
"Unfortunately, during the fire, I found carcasses of frogs, toads, unidentified, lizards, a handful of rabbits, some gophers, so this fire wasn't nice to you, to the wildlife,” Hautzinger said.
Now, the focus is on recovery and repairing damage from the fire, and the surrounding community will be asked to get involved.
"We're probably not going to be doing a whole lot of restoration work this summer," Hautzinger said. "We're going to be getting our ducks in a row, talking to the right people, figuring out the right plant list. We want it to be climate-adapted. We want it to be fire-sensitive – the replanting that we do here."
As for the community, "they're going to be part of the conversation all along, but I want them back here with dirt under their fingernails as we do the next planting," Hautzinger said.