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'It allows the firefighters to engage directly on the fire's edge, taking out some of that heat.' 'That doesn't put the fire out or get us out of the woods, so to speak,' Peebles said. But the forest home to Nevada's largest known Joshua tree doesn't appear far from the fire's footprint.įirefighters made the most progress on the blaze so far after a night of lighter fire activity and about 15 minutes of a 'wetting rain,' Marc Peebles, a spokesperson for the federal multiagency California Incident Management Team 13, said Tuesday. She wasn't sure what in southern Nevada was immediately at risk, and Bureau of Land Management officials did not respond to calls Tuesday. 'The fire behavior is extreme and uncertain,' Hughson said. The blaze has already reached the Avi Kwa Ame, or Spirit Mountain, National Monument, which just became federally designated this year after a push to better protect the sacred and environmentally distinct land.

The national preserve is home to more than 200 rare plants, and officials said it will take a while to determine the extent of the fire's damage to those species.Īs the fire appears to move into southern Nevada, Hughson said she is also worried about a variety of sensitive plants and animals in the area. 'It's going to be really hard to estimate the number of Joshua trees burned, but we do know there was a lot of them,' Hughson said. Joshua trees, which grow nowhere else in the world besides the Mojave Desert, are particularly vulnerable to fire, with little natural defense.

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It will be nearly impossible for full forests to return from the scorched earth as they once were, and they are likely to be replaced by smaller shrubs and grasses, she said. 'Recovery is really not a meaningful term here in the desert because of the global change going on,' Hughson said. Aided by brief rain, crews made the first real inroads against the blaze after sunset Monday-reporting 23% containment by Tuesday morning-but officials remain worried the fragile landscape might never fully bounce back. 'A lot of pinyon (pines), junipers gone forever, and a lot of the Joshua tree, likely.'Ĭalifornia's largest wildfire of the year has grown to over 80,000 acres in the desert around the Nevada border, burning primarily in the national preserve.

'We've lost a huge area of native vegetation,' said Debra Hughson, deputy superintendent for the Mojave National Preserve.