Australia's Fire-Ravaged Forests Are Recovering. Ecologists Hope It Lasts
In the back corner of a burned lot in Australia's fire-ravaged South Coast stands a torched tree. It's uppermost branches reach into a cloudless sky, brittle and bare. Against its charred trunk rests half-burned rubble, remains from the gift shop it used to shade.
But that's not where local resident Claire Polach is pointing. She gestures to the middle part of the tree, where lime green leaves sprout from blackened bark, as if the tree is wearing a shaggy sweater.
To Polach, the burst of regrowth is a sign that despite a months' long assault of flame and smoke, the second-hottest summer on record and a multi-year drought, Australia's nature "is doing it's thing."
As for people like her, recovering from the same? "We'll follow the nature," she says.
