Whiskeytown: A Goldmine of Botanical Treasures
April 27, 2023
7:00 – 8:00 PM (Via Zoom)
Chris McCarron
Great Basin Institute—Whiskeytown National Recreation Area
View the Presentation Here.
The Whiskeytown National Recreation Area is uniquely situated at the southeastern edge of the Klamath Range, adjacent to the intersection of the North Coast Range Interior and the Cascade Range Foothill bioregions (as denoted by The Jepson Manual). The elevation gradient within the park extends from 900ft, below Whiskeytown Dam, to 6200ft on the summit of Shasta Bally. As a result, the park has a diversity of vegetation types, species found at the edge of their range, and disjunct taxa from neighboring bioregions.
In 2018, 97% of the park was burned during the Carr Fire, opening up over 42,000 acres of land that was previously heavily vegetated. Beginning in 2021, the National Park Service partnered with the Great Basin Institute, hiring a crew to survey the PG&E infrastructure within the park for botanical resources. The following year, the Great Basin Institute hired an additional crew to survey fuel treatment areas within the park. Over 2023, a third Great Basin Institute crew will be tasked with surveying the park, building on what has been discovered over the past two years. All are encouraged to join this talk, as you will almost certainly be excited by the work being done to explore this unique and underappreciated corner of the state.
Significant discoveries have been made in the park during these surveys that deserve to be shared and celebrated with the botanical community. Chris McCarron has been the crew leader for all three years and will be presenting some of the key findings and discoveries made during these surveys, along with future plans for botanical work in the park.
Chris McCarron has been leading a Great Basin Institute crew since 2021 at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area to survey for rare, invasive, and unrecorded taxa in the park. Prior to that, he attended the University of California Berkeley for his undergraduate degree and worked at the University and Jepson Herbaria along with the East Bay Regional Parks Botanic Garden. At the moment, he has been focusing his work on elaborating on what has been discovered during his time at Whiskeytown over the past few years.