TreePeople volunteers work to restore fire-scarred Angeles National Forest

A massive nature restoration project is underway in the Angeles National Forest and the nonprofit TreePeople is leading the way with volunteers working to replant nearly 54,000 native plants and trees.

In partnership with California Botanic Garden, they are working with a $7 million Cal Fire grant to tend to roughly 1,000 forest acres over a four-year span.

"Our goal is to transition a space from a degraded habitat to a functioning habitat," Alyssa Walker of TreePeople said.

A series of wildfires, including the Bobcat Fire of 2020, the Copper Fire of 2002, Sayre Fire of 2008 and Ranch Fire of 2007, among others, left significant impacts on the land, where invasive plants have taken over -- creating once again, a fire hazard.

Volunteers were out recently in an area near Santa Clarita that was burned by the 2002 Copper Fire, pulling chaparral, an invasive mustard.

"We're going to take out all of the mustard, take out all the invasive species and put in some native species," Stephanie Liu, of TreePeople said. "This area we have right now is going to dry out once it gets hot, and then its very prone to fire. It'll just be, essentially we like to call it, a pile of kindling."

The restoration project will take about 12,000 volunteers to plant natives and remove invasive chaparral on forest land.