Our first issue of 2023 is quite a bit late—but for a good reason. We have switched our publication platform to WordPress! This platform is a better fit for regular publications like the Journal, and it makes layout significantly easier for me and my editors. Thanks to CDFW’s Web Development Team for assisting with this transition!

The first article in this issue examines the impacts of the CZU Lightning Complex fires—which occurred in August of 2020 burning through over 35,000 hectares in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties—to the forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The author found that only 24% of the burned forest cover remained alive two years later and that the fire, combined with the successive two years of extreme drought, has caused serious damage to most of the old-growth trees in the park. Next, we have a research note from the Centro de Investigaciónes Biológicas del Noroeste (Biological Research Center of the North-West) in Mexico. These researchers documented the first ever record of Paronatrema vaginicola, a helminth (parasitic worm) parasite of sharks and rays, in the west coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico. The next article summarizes work done by CDFW collaborators from the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station. This work was first presented in a special collaboration session at CDFW’s biennial Science Symposium. The paper presents a model that finds potential “lost meadows”—areas that do not currently support high groundwater elevations or meadow vegetation but exhibit the basic geomorphic and climatic characteristics of existing meadows—and revealed potential meadow habitat in the Sierra Nevada of nearly three times its current extent. The authors go on to provide applications for the model to be incorporated into planning efforts for watershed restoration. Last is a research note from a CDFW researcher in the Northern Region that documented a precocious sexual maturity of a juvenile Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon.

I only have one new editor to introduce this issue: Morgan Ivens-Duran. Morgan is an Environmental Scientist in CDFW’s Invertebrate Management Program. She received a B.S. in Marine Biology from Brown University in 2012 and an M.S. in Biological Sciences from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 2014. Her M.S. thesis evaluated shifts in the distribution and intensity of recreational fishing effort before and after Marine Protected Areas were established on the Central Coast. She has also studied invasive species in tidal mudflats, climate stressors affecting coastal salt marshes, and sea otter foraging and habitat use within Elkhorn Slough. After graduate school, she was a California State Sea Grant Fellow at the California Ocean Protection Council focusing on Marine Protected Area policy and management. After joining CDFW, she worked on management of groundfish and highly migratory species before shifting focus to reducing entanglements of large whales and sea turtles in state-managed trap fisheries.

Some exciting news from the Journal: we now have a subscriber listserv! Anyone interested in receiving updates from the Journal and being notified when new issues are available can subscribe here.

Ange Darnell Baker, PhD

Editor-in-Chief

California Fish and Wildlife Journal