Restoring Lost Pines will take years of toil, millions of dollars — and help from landowners

What used to be here, before September’s fires swept through Bastrop County and blackened Bastrop State Park, is a mature forest of pines and hardwoods thick with deer and songbirds and the whoosh of breezes through treetops. Then the Labor Day fires consumed it, leaving behind an eerily silent cemetery of trees turned to charcoal and ground stripped to bare dirt.

The Lost Pines Recovery Team recently finished writing a five-year plan for restoring the vegetation. Officials say it will take enormous amounts of money, planning and volunteer labor to help the forest fully recover.

Read more of our stories, see video and photos six months after the Labor Day wildfires

Months after Bastrop fires, scientist says wild population of Houston toads nearly gone

Mike Forstner tromps along the mucky edge of a pond, trilling loudly as he sweeps the beam of his flashlight over the bank.

He’s hoping for an answering call from an endangered Houston toad, but he hears nothing.

The tea-colored watering holes around Bastrop are the last stronghold of the endangered amphibian, which is about the size of a partially flattened apricot. But after years of drought and development, topped five months ago by searing wildfires, Forstner fears the worst.

Bastrop photographer displays grief, healing in gallery

Sheryl Bucsanyi’s photo exhibit has images of losing her home, two horses and two cats.

It’s also her personal story — that from a tragedy, good can follow.

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Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department firefighter Mizzy Zdroj is getting a new home courtesy of the ABC reality show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Her home was destroyed in the Labor Day wildfires that burned hundreds of home in Central Texas.

Parts of Bastrop State Park reopen today, three months after wildfires blazed through the piney outpost.

Good to hear!

Nearly three months after wildfires swept through Steiner Ranch, life is starting to go back to normal, even though there are still 23 scarred plots of land where homes once stood not a house is rebuilt yet.

“I want those things you can’t get back,” said Dan Sterns, a Steiner Ranch resident. “There’s no house there, but I still remember it as the place where my home was and where my kids would play outside.”

When wildfires hit Central Texas, donors opened their wallets to help survivors by giving more than $3.8 million in cash.

The donations ended up mostly in the hands of six nonprofit organizations and church groups, led by the Austin Community Foundation with $1.2 million. The groups began distributing some of that money immediately after the fires began Labor Day weekend.

Read our previous wildfire coverage.

Photo by Ricardo B. Brazziell/AMERICAN-STATESMAN