Loss to Prized Resources Unknown : Environment: The president of Laguna Greenbelt group says plant life can return but expresses worry for native animals caught in fire’s path.

In less than six hours, fire destroyed the same canyons that environmentalist Elisabeth Brown has spent a decade trying to protect.

Two of the hardest-hit areas were those closest to her heart: her Canyon Acres neighborhood and the Laguna Greenbelt that surrounds the city.

“If the fire destroyed 8,000 to 10,000 acres, that’s everything, the whole greenbelt west of Laguna Canyon Road,” said Brown, president of the Laguna Greenbelt group and a tireless worker to save Laguna Canyon from development.

Brown spent Friday inspecting the fire damage for the first time. She found Canyon Acres, the offshoot canyon of mostly funky old dwellings that has been her family’s home for 22 years, devastated as never before by fire.

About 20 of the 70 homes that lined the narrow canyon remain.

“Canyon Acres is old Laguna and it’s gone,” said Brown, whose own home was spared. “Somehow, we’ve always been lucky here before but not this time.”

She was more optimistic about the burned greenbelt areas and the 2,150-acre Laguna Canyon preserve called Laguna Laurel. She said plant life can return but expressed worry for the native animals caught in the fire’s path Wednesday.

“It’s toughest on the animals, they have no place to go in a fire like this,” she said. “My husband saw coyotes cowering under a bus bench along Laguna Canyon Road. He had never seen anything like it.”

It will take a closer inspection to determine the extent of the fire’s damage to plant life, Brown said.

Many plants, like the mix of flora making up the coastal sage scrub that serves as the habitat for the California gnatcatcher, can bounce back from such a blaze. Others, like the old oaks and sycamores, cannot.

“Some of those deep canyons, like Laurel Canyon, are just stuffed with oaks,” Brown said. “I’m anxious to see what happened to them. They are not easy to replace.”

Because the roots of the coastal sage scrub plants are protected underground, they can “renew themselves” relatively quickly, Brown said. It’s the extent of the damage that is frightening.

“Coastal sage is used to this,” Brown said, “but 10,000 acres, that’s devastating.”

On Wednesday afternoon, as the firestorm moved closer, Brown stayed at the Canyon Acres home she shares with her husband, Allen, and 17-year-old daughter Merina until the police insisted she evacuate.

“At about 3:30 they came through with megaphones telling us to evacuate, so we did,” Brown said. “We’ve had fires around us almost every year, but we’ve never been evacuated before.”

Brown, who is also president of the Canyon Acres Homeowners Assn., said the residents rarely met as a large group--until now.

“I expect we will be getting together now,” she said. “A former planning commissioner called Canyon Acres a ‘heritage neighborhood.’ This is real Laguna here.”