Airbus wins record order for 500 jets from India’s IndiGo airline

• June 20, 2023

India’s IndiGo airline is buying 500 passenger jets from European planemaker Airbus, the two companies said Monday, in a record-setting order that underscores surging demand for air travel fueled by the country’s economic growth.

IndiGo, India’s dominant carrier, is buying the narrow-body A320 aircraft in what the companies said was the single biggest purchase agreement in commercial aviation history.

Executives from both companies announced the deal on the opening day of the Paris Air Show, the world’s largest event focusing on aviation and space industry. They didn’t disclose how much the order was worth, but it would likely amount to tens of billions of dollars.

The order is “an enormous milestone,” IndiGo CEO Peter Elbers said at a press conference. “No one has ever ordered an order of this magnitude. And it speaks to the potential of Indian aviation and the ambitions which IndiGo is having.”

The purchase highlights how the two companies are “democratizing affordable air travel for millions of people in the world’s fastest growing aviation market,” Airbus Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer said in a statement.

New Delhi-based IndiGo’s order surpasses another mammoth deal signed months earlier by Air India for 470 aircraft from both Airbus and U.S.-based rival Boeing.

Indian airlines are racing to tap surging demand for travel from the nation’s growing ranks of middle-class consumers. The A320 jets that IndiGo is buying are typically used on short-haul routes.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said IndiGo’s order “is a sign of the “incredible growth for aviation” and an “opportunity for Indian people to fly for the first time.

The planemaker also notched up orders from Flynas, a budget Saudi Arabian carrier that is buying 30 A320neo jets, and Air Mauritius, which is buying three wide-body A350 aircraft for use on long-haul routes to Europe and South Asia.

Airbus likes to unveil major jet orders at the air show held every other year in its home country. Airbus is one of France’s — and Europe’s — biggest companies, and its performance at the Paris air show is seen as important to its public image in France.

​ Orange County Register 

Latest data shows California will fall far short of power needed to fuel all-EV future

• June 20, 2023

The summer of 2023 might be fairly compared to the summer of 1823, if the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has it right about power outages to come. The common ground between the two would be the lack of electricity.

According to the NERC, the country’s Western Interconnection, which includes California, much of the Western U.S., and parts of Canada and Mexico, “is experiencingheightened reliability risks heading into the summer of 2023 due to increased supply-side shortages along with the ongoing drought impacts in some areas, continued wildfire threats, and expanding heat wave events.”

If peak demand doesn’t exceed normal levels, then there should be adequate supply, says the NERC. But optimism evaporates if conditions become more difficult, and if the weatherman is right, they will be. Forecasts are calling for a warmer-than-usual California summer. It will be particularly hot in Southern California, where roughly 60% of the state’s 39 million residents live. The California Independent System Operator hasn’t issued a flex alert – “a call to consumers to voluntarily cut back on electricity and shift electricity use to off-peak hours” – since September. But its social media department would be smart to be ready for a busy season. CAISO issued five flex alerts in 2020, eight in 2021, and six last year.

Don’t blame the weather, though. Blame policy. California’s collision of its electric-vehicle mandate and its legislated transition to a zero-carbon power grid by 2045 isn’t going to cause sparks as much as it will bring darkness.

Today there are fewer than 900,000 electric vehicles on California’s roads. By 2035, there are expected to be more than 13 million, and by 2045 almost 22 million, because both the governor and the state Air Resources Board have agreed to outlaw the sale of new gasoline-powered automobiles. Every EV that replaces an internal-combustion-engine car represents another bite taken out of a power grid that’s going to be chewed up.

Because of increased demand for charging electric vehicles, fully manufactured by public policy, California will fall 21 percent short of the power needed to meet the demand according to a new Pacific Research Institute report. However, the gap will likely be even wider as this projected shortfall does not include the additional need for more power caused by the conversion of water heaters, stoves, and other appliances from natural gas to electricity.

Planning an accelerated, warp-speed construction schedule for renewables infrastructure so there will be enough power has appeal, but is little assurance the job will be done.

First, transmission capacity will need to be roughly tripled by 2050, a number of state agencies have said. This won’t take years to accomplish, it will take decades and more than just a couple of them.

Second, adding solar and wind farms, and connecting their generated power to the grid with transmission lines will encounter the usual California can’t-build hurdles. Not-in-my-back-yard resistance, much of it from the environmentalists who’ve demanded the closure of natural gas and nuclear power plants, is increasing along with plans to build. It’s a trend recently seen in the Midwest, where voters rejected two proposals to site wind farms. Anyone who believes that this state will be more accommodating should consider that both Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties have banned wind turbines in their unincorporated areas.

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If California doesn’t have blackouts this summer, it won’t be due to policymakers’ forward thinking, though they will take credit. It will be because heavy snow and rain during the winter swelled reservoirs that feed hydroelectric plants that hadn’t been producing power during the dry spell.

There’s no reason to expect this will happen again, though. After 2045, large dams, which provide 6% of the state’s electrical power, will no longer be contributors, as they are not considered a worthy renewable resource under California’s zero-carbon plan. They are, says the Stanford News Service, “a bogeyman to many environmentalists” even though they “could actually play a significant role in feeding the world more sustainably” in addition to being an important contributor to the power mix needed to run a modern economy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom can brag as much and as often as he wants about the green future happening first in California, that the state is “America’s coming attraction.” But he can’t speak into existence the perfect conditions that are necessary for California to be all-EV and at the same time avoid power shortages. The conflict is irreconcilable.

Kerry Jackson is a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.  Dr. Wayne Winegarden is a PRI senior fellow in business and economics.  Download their new study at www.pacificresearch.org.

​ Orange County Register 

Huntington Beach councilmembers call for denouncing hate

• June 20, 2023

Three Huntington Beach councilmembers want the city on Tuesday, June 20, to condemn recent flarings of antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the community.

Councilmembers Dan Kalmick, Rhonda Bolton and Natalie Moser are introducing a resolution to say: “The City Council of the city of Huntington Beach denounces antisemitism, white supremacy and anti-LGBTQ hate.”

Moser said antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ fliers that neighborhoods of residents have found in their yards this month prompted the resolution to denounce hate.

“We need to choose what type of community where we are going to be,” Moser said. “I don’t believe we are one where hate should rule the day. I want people to feel safe here and welcomed here.”

“We have an opportunity as leaders to set the tone,” she said.

Maneck Bhujwala, president of the Greater Huntington Beach Interfaith Council, already wrote the council a letter in support of the resolution.

“The Greater Huntington Beach Council is alarmed at the rise of racist, hate propaganda that tarnishes the good name of our city,” Bhujwala said. “We the representatives of various religious communities of Huntington Beach unitedly condemn this dangerous development.”

The City Council on Tuesday will also consider the city’s next fiscal budget and a request from Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark to direct city staff to draft a new law to make it harder for children to obtain “obscene and pornographic books” at Huntington Beach Public Libraries, though the request did not offer examples. Van Der Mark said she will make a presentation at the meeting.

The City Council meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 2000 Main St.

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​ Orange County Register 

Storybook cottage in Redlands historic district lists for $525,000

• June 20, 2023

A whimsical Redlands cottage has come on the market for $525,000.

Designed in a French chateau style, this well-maintained 835-square-foot home has one bedroom, one bathroom and space-saving built-ins.

The house is nestled in a small lot on a cul-de-sac street of storybook homes that are the stuff of fairytales. Known as Normandie Court, the neighborhood built by F.E. Carson and C.R. Hudson in 1926 is a Redlands historic district.

Inside the compact, all-white home is a living room with a built-in window seat, a fireplace and a ceiling fan. The living room flows into the dining room, which has a built-in china cabinet.

Drawers and a cabinet are recessed into what would otherwise be unused wall space in the hallway.

A cozy kitchen shares space with a breakfast nook and a laundry area at the rear of the house.

The back door steps down to a small patio.

Flowers and lush greenery carved by a brick walkway wrap around the house. And like its neighbors, there’s a detached one-car garage.

Joanna Heard of Re/Max Advantage has the listing.

Records show the house sold last in January 2022 for $505,000.

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​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: Angels and Dodgers have switched places

• June 20, 2023

Traditionally, June is when the Dodgers start to surge. And a year ago, late May and early June was when what had appeared to be a promising Angels’ season went in the tank, with a 14-game losing streak, a change in managers and the unraveling of the team’s agreement with the city of Anaheim over Angel Stadium’s future leading into another dreary summer in Orange County.

And now? As the Dodgers and Angels begin a two-game series in Anaheim on Tuesday night, the Angels are surging and the Dodgers’ season almost seems to be hanging by a thread, and maybe those assumptions about who’s a seller and who’s a buyer at the trade deadline have been knocked askew.

(Memo to all of those pundits who insist the Angels must trade Shohei Ohtani before he abandons them in free agency: Shut up.)

The Angels enter Tuesday night 41-33, 4½ games behind first-place Texas in the AL West and second in the AL wild-card standings, with 11 wins in 14 games. They’re rolling even as injuries continue to ravage the lineup; Anthony Rendon was placed on the injured list on Monday, the third infielder to go to the IL in the last week.

Interestingly enough, as KLAA’s Trent Rush noted when we talked this weekend, the possible turning point to this Angels season might have come on the almost one-year anniversary of what might have been last season’s inflection point.

That was a Sunday afternoon game in Philadelphia last June 5, when the Angels – who had already lost 10 straight after a 27-17 start – blew a 6-2 eighth-inning lead. Bryce Harper hit a grand slam to tie it, and Bryson Stott’s two-run walk-off shot off Jimmy Herget decided it, 9-7. Two days later, Joe Maddon was fired and Phil Nevin was promoted.

So flash forward to this past June 4 in Houston. The Angels had lost the first three of a four-game series and trailed 1-0 when Luis Rengifo tied it with a homer to deep right-center in the sixth. Ohtani doubled in the go-ahead run in the eighth, and that 2-1 victory launched this 11-3 stretch, including three out of four against the Rangers last week in Arlington.

Consider this, too: The Angels blew an 8-2 lead in Kansas City on Saturday, with former Corona High star Samad Taylor providing the walk-off hit in a 9-8 Royals victory. The next day, Ohtani and Mike Trout – the latter battling the worst slump of his career for more than a month – hit back-to-back homers in a 5-2 victory.

Their counterparts up the freeway could have used such a momentum-arresting moment this past weekend. Then again, having the worst bullpen in the National League makes it difficult to escape the torture the Dodgers have faced over the last month.

They’re 11-17 since May 18, and the pitching that has been the foundation of their franchise for six decades is letting them down. They’ve given up 167 runs in those 28 games, and the last time that happened was in 1958, their first season in L.A., when an aging, flawed team finished seventh in an eight-team league and played its home games in the Coliseum.

Remember what we’ve always said about how every fan base in baseball hates its bullpen at one time or another? It’s safe to say Dodger fans currently despise theirs with the heat of a thousand suns. Alex Vesia, Victor González, Phil Bickford, Yence Almonte, Brusdar Graterol … all have veered between undependable and abysmal. Evan Phillips has been the only trustworthy reliever, and even he gave up a walk-off homer in Cincinnati on the last road trip.

Naturally, Manager Dave Roberts gets most of the blame. But what’s he supposed to do when almost every option is a bad one? Pitch Phillips three innings every night?

(Maybe Roberts should pull out the Winston Churchill speech. When the Dodgers were 16-26 early in the 2018 season, he quoted the British prime minister’s line, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” The next night he told them, “Expect good things to happen,” and they went on a 14-3 run and eventually won the division. But at least that team had a functioning pitching staff.)

While the bullpen ERA is 29th in baseball (5.04, only a half-run better than the Oakland A’s), this is a staff-wide issue. Dodger starters’ collective ERA is 4.38 and 16th in baseball, and that number has plunged since Julio Urías went on the IL, but the more pressing concern is an inability to go deep enough into games to take some of the burden off of the bullpen.

Of the last 15 games, dating to June 6, Dodger starters have completed six innings seven times. Three of those were by Clayton Kershaw (two of them seven-inning stints), two by Bobby Miller and one by Emmet Sheehan, who pitched six no-hit innings in his big league debut Friday night against the San Francisco Giants only to watch the bullpen blow a 4-0 lead after he left.

The other choices? Bullpen games, watching young starters try to figure things out, or praying for the best when Noah Syndergaard goes to the mound. They’ll have a decision to make when he comes off the 15-day disabled list, which could be as early as Saturday.

The three-game sweep by San Francisco over the weekend was embarrassing enough. Naturally, the Giants treated it with the sensitivity and compassion you might expect, posting an image of the HOLLLYWOOD sign on social media.

Get it? Three L’s.

Greetings from HoLLLywood pic.twitter.com/gHIXISi4nx

— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 18, 2023

Maybe that sweep, and seeing the Giants vault into second place, will spur some urgency from Andrew Friedman, Brandon Gomes and the rest in the executive suites. The Dodgers have made 27 transactions involving 19 different pitchers in June alone, mainly involving the shuttle between L.A. and Oklahoma City.

But there’s no sense waiting for the Aug. 1 trade deadline to make a move, or assuming that the imminent return of Urías or Daniel Hudson will straighten things out by itself, or banking on any sort of late-season return from Walker Buehler or Dustin May. The pitching staff needs help now because the three-wild-card playoff format isn’t that forgiving.

Before Monday night’s games, the Dodgers were one game ahead of Philadelphia for the third and final NL wild-card spot. The Angels, in the No. 2 AL spot, were a game and a half clear of the cutoff.

Even the most loyal, devoted, optimistic Angel fan couldn’t have seen that one coming, right?

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Angels players celebrate after their 3-0 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday night in Kansas City, Mo. The Angels enter Tuesday night’s game against the Dodgers with a 41-33 record and 11 wins in their past 14 games. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

​ Orange County Register 

Junior guards take the pier plunge to kick off summer

• June 20, 2023

Brynn Kelly stood on the wooden pier in San Clemente, ready to make a splash into the chilly ocean water below.

“It looks tall from up here,” said Kelly, last in line on Monday, June 19, for the iconic pier jump, a rite of passage for those who participate in the city’s junior lifeguards summer program. “When you’re halfway through, it feels like it’s endless … it’s the only reason I’m here.”

Most schools are out for the summer season and across the county, kids are heading to the beach for junior lifeguard and surf sessions, to local pools for swim lessons and rec swim sessions and to parks and community centers for summer camps.

Thousands of kids will partake in junior lifeguard programs from Seal Beach to San Clemente, each beach town offering slightly different programs, but all rooted in the same lifesaving and beach safety lessons.

Lauren DeVries watched as her son, Trent, 11, jumped from the pier for his second year, and the third time so far this season.

“He loves it, it’s just an opportunity they don’t usually get, to jump,” she said. “It’s just a San Clemente, community-type event we love and get to experience. That’s the highlight. For the parents, too. It’s getting over the fear.”

Jen Beatty watched her daughter, Rooney, 11, saying she doesn’t get nervous anymore – just super excited.

“They have fun, it’s a great opportunity,” Beatty said.

Tatiana Cavazos, a tourist from Riverside, stopped on the pier to watch the kids take the estimated 27-foot jump to the ocean. (Jumping from the pier is normally prohibited.)

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Lifeguard departments latest to face staff shortage as summer beach crowds arrive

“I think it’s pretty amazing,” she said. “It’s refreshing to see something like this, especially with the past few years we’ve had the pandemic.”

Her son, Niko, 7, watched the guards training all morning, she said. “He saw this and he’s in awe.”

Junior lifeguard lieutenant Grey Bennet got ready for his eighth jump since he started the program three years ago.

“Your heart beat gets excited, it’s like ‘ba boom, ba boom, ba boom,’” he described.

The bummer summer weather of the morning couldn’t dampen the mood, with the sun and blue skies poking out by the afternoon for the beach crowds out enjoying the sand and surf.

There may be more spotty sunshine Tuesday and Wednesday, but another low-pressure system is headed to the area by Thursday and Friday, leading to more cloud cover heading into the weekend, National Weather Service meteorologist Adam Roser said.

Low-pressure systems from the north cause cooler, moist air along the coast, a pattern that has stuck around since spring, he said. Water temperatures are still cool – in the low 60s – and when the water is colder than the air, it creates a “temperature inversion,” acting like a lid keeping the cooler temperatures in place.

“As we get into summer months, the water warms up and catches up with the warming of the air,” Roser said. “There’s less low pressure systems from the north as well, more areas of high pressure.”

Meteorologists are eyeing a high pressure area off Mexico that could potentially head to the area by next weekend, he said.

“That should,” he said, “help it warm up.”

​ Orange County Register 

Sacramento Snapshot: Those who report fentanyl in drugs could be protected if bill continues to advance

• June 19, 2023

Editor’s note: Sacramento Snapshot is a weekly series during the legislative session detailing what Orange County’s representatives in the Assembly and Senate are working on — from committee work to bill passages and more.

It hasn’t been an easy year to pass fentanyl-related legislation in the California Legislature. But one effort, meant to prevent more overdoses and deaths by extending protections for people requesting medical or police assistance, is finding success.

Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, is proposing a bill, SB-250, that would expand California’s Good Samaritan law — which protects people seeking medical assistance for a drug-related overdose for themselves or another person under certain circumstances — to include those reporting to medical professionals or law enforcement opioid-related overdoses or substances that test positive for fentanyl.

The idea is to extend immunity to those who are using fentanyl test strips, small strips of paper that can detect the presence of fentanyl in various drugs, and report the contaminated substance to law enforcement.

Having already received unanimous support in the Senate, Umberg’s bill cleared the Assembly Public Safety Committee, which held up other fentanyl-related legislation, last week with full support.

“We must tackle this epidemic from all sides to prevent more overdoses and deaths,” said Umberg.

Earlier this year, Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Los Angeles Democrat who chairs the Public Safety Committee, put a hold on fentanyl legislation, saying there were “duplicative efforts” that only offered “temporary solutions.” Instead, he wanted a broader hearing to address the overall crisis, “not just the criminality portion.”

While some smaller bills have seen movement this legislative session, the overarching theme for fentanyl-related measures is that public safety committees in either chamber are not creating new laws or penalties.

In other news

• A group of senators OK’d legislation last week that would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to incarcerate parents near their children. The department already takes family location into consideration when it comes to where prisoners serve their sentences, but there is no requirement to place someone close to their child.

Children of incarcerated parents, according to the Legal Services for Prisoners with Children group, are more likely than other children to suffer a range of negative outcomes, ranging from antisocial behavior to drug use. The LSPC says regular contact between children and their incarcerated parents leads to improved family reunification, as well as lower rates of parole violations and recidivism, following a prisoner’s release.

The bill from Assemblymember Matt Haney, D-San Francisco already cleared the lower chamber with no opposition. It most recently won the approval of the Senate Public Safety Committee.

• An Assembly committee approved legislation from Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who represents south Orange County, that would require gun sellers to post warnings about the risk of suicide or death or injuries during a domestic dispute while a gun is present in the home. It also requires the signage to include the “988” phone number for suicide and crisis prevention.

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​ Orange County Register 

Growing seed bank is ‘Noah’s Ark’ for Southern California desert plants

• June 19, 2023

Corina Godoy has an admittedly unorthodox dream.

She hopes to adopt a bird. She’s not yet sure what kind of bird, but it needs to have a taste for feasting on the juicy red berries that grow on lycium, a thorny shrub found throughout the deserts of Southern California.

Sometime after her bird eats those berries, Godoy’s dream continues, she’ll root through its droppings. Then the petite scientist will pluck out the lycium seeds that had been nestled inside the red berries, waiting, as nature intended, for the bird’s acidic digestive system to free them and prime them for planting.

But instead of sowing the seeds, Godoy’s dream is to carefully store them in a refrigerator. That way, if a wildfire or climate change or other disaster decimates the local lycium population, she’ll have seeds ready to help ensure the shrub — and the wildlife that depends on it — can live to see another day.

These are what your dreams look like when you’re part of a small team tasked with trying to preserve the biodiversity of Southern California’s deserts.

Mojave Desert Land Trust started a seed bank at its Joshua Tree headquarters back in 2017 to help restore and enhance habitat for rare, threatened and culturally important species. Over the past six years, Godoy and her colleagues have collected, processed and secured seeds for some 210 species of plants found in the Mojave and Colorado deserts, including the beloved Joshua tree.

“This seed bank acts as an insurance policy — or, if you want to look at it a different way, like Noah’s Ark,” Godoy said. “When there is a need for that seed, our mission is to have it ready and here and in prime condition.”

Still, so far, the Mojave Desert Seed Bank is safeguarding less than 10% of the plant species found in our local deserts.

“We don’t think of the desert as this really lush, biodiverse forest,” said Kelly Herbinson, joint executive director of the Mojave Desert Land Trust. “But it really is. In fact, we have a higher level of biodiversity than many pine forest ecosystems.”

Bees and ants feed on the blooms of a Saguaro cactus, which stands more than 15 feet tall at Mojave Desert Land Trust in Joshua Tree on Wednesday, Jun. 14, 2023. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Thanks to a $3.2 million state grant, and a large contribution from an anonymous private donor, the trust’s seed bank is about to get a lot of new deposits.

Herbinson said they plan to use the new funding to collect and bank seeds representing at least 300 more species over the next four years. Eventually, if funding and the climate and Godoy’s adopted bird cooperate, the team hopes to have seeds representing all of the roughly 2,400 species of plants now found in our deserts.

Along with preserving “one of the last remaining intact ecosystems in the United States,” Herbinson said her team hopes the work they’re doing might also help scientists around the world chart a survival strategy for plant life in regions that are starting to turn into deserts because of climate change.

And the secret might just be waiting inside a tiny seed in a refrigerator on the edge of Joshua Tree.

A different kind of bank

Farmers have always informally “banked” seeds, saving and exchanging them to replant and rotate their crops. But picture a seed bank and you might conjure up images of a massive concrete structure jetting out from a hillside in the arctic’s frozen tundra.

Appropriately known as the “doom’s day vault,” Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault is arguably the most famous such facility in the world. The structure tunnels deep underground and is capable of surviving a nuclear blast. It’s now holding more than 1.2 million seeds representing the most important food crops from nearly every country in the world.

The Norway facility actually stores copies of seeds. Originals stay with one of the estimated 1,700 other banks around the world that collect seeds for crops grown in their communities. And if a natural disaster or conflict strains those crops, whichever government or research group deposited seeds in the Norway facility can make a withdrawal and hopefully fend off any potential famine.

If Norway’s seed bank is like Fort Knox, think of the Mojave Desert Seed Bank like your local credit union.

There’s no secretive underground tunnel at the Joshua Tree site, which is open to the public. The facility also isn’t focused on crop seeds, though Indigenous populations and various wildlife do eat different parts of the plants they preserve here. Instead, this team wants to preserve all plant life found in local deserts.

The concept, Herbinson said, is based on growing awareness of how even plants of the same species can have different genetics in different parts of the world. So if Southern Californians want to plant white sage or smoke tree and order seeds online, the variety they get might not thrive because it’s not adapted to our climate or it won’t lure local pollinators in the same way. They also could disrupt the genetic lineage of the plants that are here, or introduce invasive weeds that can increase fire danger and choke out native vegetation.

“We kind of joke that we have an artisanal operation,” Herbinson said. “All of our seed is locally sourced to this specific genetic population. So we’re able to restore with the genetic lineages that are supposed to be there.”

Making deposits

For now, the Mojave Desert Seed Bank team does its work in a small room packed with three refrigerators, tools and a Trader Joe’s bags full of plant clippings. The small room does have a big window, making it possible for members of the public who stop by to see the trust’s demonstration garden or to buy common seeds can see what they’re doing.

Since its founding in 2006, the nonprofit trust has bought up and conserved more than 800 plots of desert land that total some 120,000 acres. They’ve donated about half of that land to the National Park Service or Bureau of Land Management, where it’s preserved as wilderness areas. The trust plans to preserve the other half for its own use, which includes allowing Godoy and others on the team to hunt down seeds from plants still on their wish list.

Timing is key. The desert has blooming seasons each spring and fall. But depending on temperatures and rainfall and other factors, windows to collect seeds from blossoming plants can shift significantly, Herbinson said. Some plants bloom for just a few days, some bloom only once in 10 years. And — particularly in superbloom years like this one — many bloom all at once, miles apart, making it tricky for their small staff to get everything before that window closes.

Once staff or volunteers find a plant on the wish list that’s in bloom, Godoy said the labor-intensive process of harvesting and cleaning the seeds (so they don’t get moldy or attract bugs) can vary widely between species.

“Each seed has its own sort of story in terms of how we help it become a plant,” she said.

For most plants, they first gently grind them by hand on a copper filter. Some then go into a blower, where controlled air pressure helps separate seeds from other plant material.

And seeds range widely from rugged to delicate. Seeds of the honey mesquite tree, for example, are so tough that they use pliers to crack open the outer shell. But when they’re handling tiny seeds for, say, screwbean mesquite, Godoy said even a deep breath can be disastrous.

“We can’t laugh at that time because one big guffaw will send everything everywhere.”

After the seeds are cleaned, most go into jars that are stored in white refrigerators. Some go into the trust’s germination chamber, where they try to figure out optimum conditions to make the seeds sprout.

Along with their own trials, the trust also helps agencies such as the BLM do research on seeds. This week, they’ve got fiddleneck seeds in the germination chamber so they can help BLM learn the best way to grow the plants, which are a food source for the threatened desert tortoise.

In a twist of irony, efforts to get Joshua trees declared endangered have prevented the trust from gathering seeds for a few years.

The plants currently aren’t rare. But due to climate change and increased fire risk — as demonstrated by a blaze that started last week in Joshua Tree National Park — a study out of UC Riverside estimates that up to 80% of the park’s Joshua tree habitat might be gone by the turn of the century. For now, with the slow-growing plant’s status under contention, Mojave Desert Land Trust staff can’t harvest new seeds, though they thankfully have seeds from several years ago still in their bank.

The trust uses seeds it collects from other common species to grow plants in its own nursery.

About half are set aside for the nonprofit’s annual native plant sale each October. The event has become so popular that Herbinson said people come from as far as Las Vegas and Los Angeles, lining up at 3:30 in the morning to get first dibs.

The other half of plants the trust grows are for contracts with different agencies or private businesses. They’ve helped the Wildlands Conservancy reseed native plants in portions of the nearby Whitewater Preserve that were destroyed by wildfire in 2020, for example. They also grow plants for developers who often are required to add native plants on their property or nearby land to mitigate any negative environmental effects of their projects. Herbinson said that includes companies that aim to mine for lithium near the Salton Sea.

“We just took on a major contract regrowing 30,000 plants for restoration of the Salton Sea,” she said, as part of a state plan to use vegetation to hold down soil that triggers asthma and other problems for local residents.

To support such efforts, they’re gonna need a bigger bank.

Bigger bank coming soon

In late May, the land trust received a $3.2 million grant from the California Wildlife Conservation Board. They plan to use the funds to more than double the species of plants represented in the seed bank, with a pledge to collect more than 2,000 pounds of seed over the next four years and make it available for restoration across the region.

As part of the expansion effort, they also plan to create an inventory of California desert seed and share protocols for the best way to germinate and plant particular seeds. And they’ll create a public outreach program about seed banking and the importance of native plants.

Kelly Herbinson, joint executive director of Mojave Desert Land Trust, shows off a demonstration garden at the nonprofit’s headquarters in Joshua Tree on Wednesday, Jun. 14, 2023. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Using a donation from a private donor, the nonprofit also will build a new 2,500 square-foot seed bank on the back half of its property, near the nursery. The building will house a seed lab, climate-controlled storage inside a large walk-in refrigerator, a processing room and workspace for staff and volunteers. And it’ll be solar-powered, with a generator for backup.

They aren’t entirely certain low long refrigerated seeds stay viable, with tests underway now showing some are good for at least two years. But down the road, Godoy said they also hope to start doing long-term storage of some rarer seeds, as the Norway facility does, since such storage can keep seeds viable for centuries.

There’s a lot of uncertainty looking that far into the future, Godoy said.

“We can just proactively begin to prepare for what is inevitable, which is the need for this seed bank.”

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