Gnarled, tall and all-seeing.
Sean Gallup / Getty Images,
The iconic spindly plants are under threat from a variety of factors, including climate change and development, and the California legislature is stepping in to help.
What is it? Some think the scraggly branches of the Joshua tree resemble something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Children's books aside, the Joshua tree is a yucca variety that's related to spiky agaves.
What's the big deal?
Want to listen to the full story on Joshua Trees? Click the play button at the top of this page.
What are people saying? There is plenty of debate on the conservation efforts for the species.
Here's Kelly Herbinson, the co-executive director of the Mojave Desert Land Trust, who spoke to Wells about the current state of Joshua Trees:
What we're seeing right now is unprecedented. [The Joshua Trees are] mostly brown, there's little bits of green left, but they really are sort of these zombie forests.
We're having significantly increased wildfires across the desert region everywhere.
And Brendan Cummings, conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the petition in California that started this whole debate.
Managing a species in the face of climate change, it's something that's been talked about for 20, 30 years... But it's not really been implemented on a landscape scale, anywhere yet that I'm aware of. And so we're entering into somewhat uncharted territory here.
So, what now?
Learn more:
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.