Private landowners, government agencies emphasize prescribed fire for wildfire risk reduction

Moving from right to left across the north-facing slope, they set narrow, vertical stripes of vegetation aflame, eventually burning 20 acres of it in one day. A bulldozer and driver were stationed on the far side of the hill, where a section of brush had been removed to ensure the fire didn’t spread beyond where it was intended to.

Through prescribed fire operations like this, fire ecologist Jared Hendricks and those he works with have cleared fire-hazard vegetation along roughly four miles of a five-mile firebreak cut out by bulldozers during the 2018 River Fire. Hendricks’ work will protect the Benmore Valley, and nearby areas at the southern edge of South Cow Mountain, from future fires, he says.

This wasn’t the first burn Hendricks had overseen: he estimated he’s applied fire to roughly 400 acres of land in the two decades he has been doing it. This fall, he plans to undertake another large burn project on private land near a four-mile firebreak cut by the Bureau of Land Management west of Scotts Valley.

Of course, Hendricks isn’t the only one in Lake County practicing prescribed fire.

Private landowners on Cobb Mountain and around the lake are using similar methods to clear their land of “ladder fuels” that can turn a healthy wildland fire into a destructive “crown” fire that can kill even the biggest trees in a forest. The California Department of Fire and Forestry, the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management also use prescribed fire on public lands.

Prescribed burning is a traditional practice among many Native American tribes, and was widely used for thousands of years until it was made a violation of federal law in the early 1900s, as strict fire suppression policies like those that gave birth to the forest service’s Smokey Bear campaign sought to eliminate fire from the landscape.

The federal government has since changed its tactic of total suppression—which had been motivated by years of destructive fire seasons beginning in 1910—to one of fire management that understands prescribed fire as ecologically beneficial. A 2001 review of national fire management policy admits that full suppression programs had compromised forest lands.

“As a result of fire exclusion, the condition of fire-adapted ecosystems continues to deteriorate,” the review notes. “The fire hazard situation in these areas is worse than previously understood.”

Now, as several consecutive seasons of highly damaging wildfires in California have called increased attention to that deterioration, government agencies are putting more resources into controlled burning. Governor Gavin Newsom has made $1 billion available over a five year period from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for “active forestland management,” which includes prescribed burning. This month, Cal Fire awarded $67 million in grants for various land management projects that involve brush clearing and applied fire. Will Evans, the director of the local nonprofit Clear Lake Environmental Research Center, said CLERC has applied for up to $5 million from Cal Fire, and is likely to be awarded funding through the agency this year to begin a group of large fuel reduction projects including prescribed burns.

The work applied for in the grant includes 28 acres of prescribed burning, fuel reduction (including mechanical removal of vegetation and pile burning) on another 1,125 acres, and reforestation of 154 acres of land in Lake County.

Jake Hannan, a Cal Fire Battalion Chief based on Cobb Mountain, said Cal Fire is continuing a longstanding “monitor-and-advise” practice of helping landowners conduct their own burns on private land. What’s changing, he indicated, is the emphasis that’s being placed on prescribed burning around the state.

“Our intent is to re-introduce this whole (prescribed fire) process to the area,” Hannan said, noting that Cal Fire is in the beginning stages of planning larger-scale burns in Lake County. “We’re trying to bring burning back as a way to prevent excess fuel growth,” he said. “Agency-wide, that’s our direction.”

Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean said the agency has recently been putting more emphasis on education about controlled burning.

“We are out there trying to educate the public that this is not a bad thing,” he said, noting that prescribed fire can nurse a forest “back to resiliency, back to health.”

Cobb resident Gary Prather, who has worked for both Cal Fire and the USFS, said his family has been practicing controlled burning on their land for six generations.

“Too many years we spent fighting fires we should have allowed to burn,” he said, referencing state and federal fire suppression policies. “I think we learned that over the years, controlled burning is good.”

Prather welcomed what he sees as a recent “change of attitudes on controlled burns” among the general public. “That’s good,” he said. “I think people need to do that.”

Prather, Hendricks and others involved with prescribed fire in Lake County have noted the Lake County Air Quality Management District has been more flexible about approving their operations in recent years. Previously, the district had more strictly enforced a requirement that all controlled burns be extinguished by 3 p.m. on the day they were ignited—a practice Prather criticized. “If you have a fire, you want to start it early and have it burned by dark,” he said. “You don’t want to rush it.”

Now, LCAQMD is more understanding, both he and Hendricks said—allowing more burns to be done.

LCAQMD Air Quality Engineer Fahny Attar said last week that private landowners seeking permits for controlled burns on parcels between one and 100 acres must apply for a “smoke management plan.” To burn, a landowner must be approved on a day-to-day basis by the district, depending on weather conditions like wind, temperature and humidity.

“The normal process to obtain a Smoke Management Plan takes from 10 to 30 minutes depending on the level of preparedness of the applicant,” said LCAQMD Director Douglas Gearhart. “We are working with people to better explain the processes and options available to them. Additionally, the State has made more options available or larger burns and assistance from Cal Fire to complete larger burns as well as making assistance available to us and to burners to promote and fund additional prescribed fire work to be completed this year.”

An increased emphasis on controlled burning in the wake of destructive wildfires is not limited to Lake County. In 2018, residents of Humboldt County founded the first prescribed burn association in the western United States. The Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association is a grassroots group that undertakes prescribed fire projects on private land. By mid-2019, the group had over 80 members.

In Lake County, CLERC’s treasurer Carolyn Ruttan conceives of a similar but “less formal” group for the area. The Lake County PBA, she said, consists of a small network of like-minded people who practice prescribed fire on their own lands. She counted Hendricks’ burn as the first Lake County PBA burn—in spirit.

“We have done (prescribed fire) on our own land in the past, and we want to see more of it done in the community,” Ruttan said, “because it can make a big change over a large acreage fairly quickly.” She added that CLERC’s grant application process brought her into contact with a wide array of landowners in Lake County, whom she queried about their thoughts on conducting prescribed fire on their own properties.

“Some people are still very alarmed at that suggestion, but there was nobody that we’ve talked to so far the didn’t want it,” she said.