After scorching more than a third of the island, the Santa Rosa Island Fire was nearing full containment — at 97 percent — and had burned 18,379 acres on Tuesday. It stopped growing on Friday and no further growth was expected, officials said.
Crews are now in the “mop up” and repair phase, including suppression repairs within the Main Ranch Complex by recovering containment lines with vegetation.
“Resource advisors — including restoration biologists, archeologists and cultural specialists — are working closely with equipment operators on techniques to minimize additional ground disturbance, soil compaction, and displacement,” officials said in a Tuesday update.
The work will reduce soil erosion by spreading and slowing water flow and increasing soil cover, officials said. It will also reduce the visual impacts of suppression activities.
The fire started after a 67-year-old man ran his boat ashore on May 15 and is now the largest wildfire on record to burn through any of the Channel Islands. The “human-caused” fire remains under investigation, officials said.
The fire has launched Santa Rosa Island — the second largest island in the chain — into international fame. It’s been covered by news outlets worldwide emphasizing Santa Rosa’s rare flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world.
However, at least some of the island’s ecological and cultural resources have survived.
A grove of rare and endangered Torrey pine trees was directly in the path of the fire, but early assessments from firefighters found that while some small pockets of the Torrey pines did burn, the trees “still exist and remain largely intact.”
Additionally, aircraft found last week that the historic South Point Light Station — built in 1937 to replace a former beacon and restored in 2020 by the National Park Service — was still standing.
Whether the other rare and endangered flora and fauna on the island have suffered significant damage — some species’ entire global range rests within the burn scar — is to be determined.
Santa Rosa Island will remain closed through at least June 6, 2026, due to the wildfire.
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