“Once fire goes through, people just assume nothing is there, that it is destroyed. But that's not true at all.

It's like waves upon waves of new life coming in.”

- Maya Khosla, Wildlife Biologist and Writer

While visiting a recently burned forest with other scientists, Maya was astonished by the abundance and diversity of life among the blackened trees.

“Fire in the American West is like this grand reset button, everything starts from that point onward.

It's just an amazing, thriving intensity of life coming up from the ground, responding to the light that's available, the resources that are available and animals coming in to feast on all this.”

-Maya Khosla

Maya is the Senior Wildlife Biologist at Surf to Snow Environmental Resource Management and 2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County. After observing the rich beauty and biodiversity in a post-burn forest, she set up cameras throughout the Sierra Nevada mountain range to capture evidence of her discovery.

Featuring Maya Khosla

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‘What the Forest Holds,’ episode of ‘for the wild’ podcast featuring Maya Khosla

“The Wild After Wildlife,” lecture by Maya Khosla at Oregon State University