How California eco bureaucrats halted a Pacific Palisades fire-safety project to save an endangered shrub

California’s eco bureaucrats halted a wildfire prevention project near the Pacific Palisades to protect an endangered shrub.

It’s just the latest clash between fire safety and conservation in California that is coming under scrutiny following the devastating outbreak of the Palisades Fire — the most devastating blaze in Los Angeles history, which has consumed the very same area.

In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began replacing nearly 100-year-old power line poles cutting through Topanga State Park, when the project was halted within days by conservationists outraged that federally endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants had been trampled during the process.

The goal of the project was to improve fire safety for the Pacific Palisades area by replacing the wooden poles with steel, widening fire-access lanes in the area, and installing wind and fire-resistant power lines — all after the area was identified as having an “elevated fire risk,” according to the LA Times.

“This project will help ensure power reliability and safety, while helping reduce wildfire threats,” the LADWP said at the time. “These wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life.”

But, after an amateur botanist hiking through the park during the work saw the harm done to some of the park’s Braunton’s milkvetch — a flowered shrub with only a few thousand specimens remaining in the wild — and complained, the project was completely halted, Courthouse News Service reported.

Instead of fire-hardening the park, the city — which the state said had undertaken the work without proper permitting — ended up paying $2 million in fines and was ordered by the California Coastal Commission to reverse the whole project and replant the rare herb.

That work saved about 200 Braunton’s milkvetch plants — almost all of which have now likely been torched in the wildfires that consumed Topanga Canyon, along with nearly 24,000 acres of some of LA’s most sought-after real estate.

At least eight people have died and 5,000 homes have been destroyed by the fire, which was still just 14% contained as of Monday.

It was not clear whether the steel poles were ever installed.

The good news for the milkvetch, however, is that they usually need wildfire to sprout — meaning dormant seeds now have a massive new habitat for a new crop of the rare shrub.

In the week of chaos that has claimed at least 24 lives, California and LA leadership have faced scrutiny over their approach to wildfire safety verses conservation — most notably from President-elect Donald Trump, who accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of prioritizing the wellbeing of “worthless fish” over Californian’s safety.

“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt… but didn’t care about the people of California,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, accusing Newsom of blocking his 2020 federal order to divert water runoff from northern California to southern reservoirs.

That order was halted days after Trump issued it, with Newsom responding to criticism from conservationists who argued it would harm the endangered minnow-like fish and other native fish.

Delta smelt, once an important part of the local California ecosystem, are now effectively extinct — meaning they still exist, but their numbers are so few that they no longer have any impact on their environment.

In the years since Newsom sued to block Trump’s order the two politicians have bickered back and forth over California water-access, with Trump vowing to block wildfire aid to the state as recently as September if the governor doesn’t give in.

Newsom, in response, called Trump’s accusations “pure fiction.”

“The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need,” a spokesperson previously told The Post.

But California’s water supplies have been scrutinized amidst the fires — especially after some fire hydrants in the city ran dry as firefighters battled the flames, and the pressure for what water they had was often low.

Most notably, the county-run Santa Ynez Reservoir — which is right in the heart of Pacific Palisades, and can hold 117 million gallons — was empty when the fires broke out last week, and has been out of commission since around February 2024.

Gov. Newsom, however, told NBC News the state’s reservoirs in southern California were all “completely full” when the fires started.

Last week the governor announced a probe into why the reservoir was empty.

Exactly what sparked the fires remains under investigation, but they are believed to have begun not far from Topanga State Park on a trail in the neighboring Temescal Gateway Park.

Neither the LADWP nor the California Coastal Commission responded to request for comment.