Landowner Perspectives on Reforestation following a High-Severity Wildfire in California

We interviewed 27 nonindustrial forest landowners whose properties burned in a wildfire in California's central Sierra Nevada in 2014 about postfire reforestation and local and government-assisted reforestation programs. All wanted to reforest, but a third would not have without the free reforestation program offered by the Resource Conservation District. The rest would have tried to do the work themselves or pursued other programs despite complicated logistics and high upfront costs. Many experienced distress, or solastalgia, at the loss of forest and wanted to put the forest back the way it was as quickly as possible. This may limit reforestation suited to climate change. Reforestation is a way of assuring carbon sequestration and regrowth, and may have an important role in helping to heal the emotional distress of those who have lost their forests to wildfire.