For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Sept. 17. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Mendocino National Forest is open to the public again after a historic closure.
The U.S. Forest Service ended the regional closure order at 13 of the 18 national forests in California at midnight Thursday. It reopened the parks a couple days early because of improving weather and fire conditions, at least in some parts of the state.
This was the second time in the Forest Service’s 116-year history that it closed public access to all its trails and campgrounds in California. The first time was on Sept. 9 of last year when the sky turned orange because of all the wildfires blazing across the state.
“Enacting a statewide forest closure order is not the decision that we at the Forest Service wanted to make. We went through options A through Y and when options A through Y weren’t working, we had to go to Option Zed, which in this case was enacting a forest closure order.”
Samantha Reho is a spokesperson with the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest region, which includes California, Hawaii and Pacific Islands associated with the U.S.
“By enacting this closure order, it essentially gave our personnel and resources the time and space to be able to focus specifically on fire since this is a priority event time, as well as to make sure that we’re keeping those in our communities and our people safe.”
Access to visitors was initially closed late last month to reduce the likelihood of human-caused fires on National Forest land during a period of high fire risk and limited firefighting resources.
“The numbers change routinely, but it’s upwards of 70 to 80% of all fire starts are caused by human and human error.”
More than half of all wildfires happening in the U.S. right now are happening in California already. And even though the Forest Service doesn’t track search-and-rescue operations at the moment, a report from the Pew Charitable Trust done last year found an increasing number of visitors to National Forest lands has driven up search-and-rescue calls.
“So in a hypothetical situation if we had a hiker who was injured and needs to be medevaced, because of how strained resources are, we would have to take a helicopter or another vehicle and pull it away from a fire to be able to help that hiker and that’s not a risk we wanted to take.”
The Pacific Southwest’s regional forester, Jennifer Eberlien, made the decisions to close and reopen the forests and Reho says that neither decision was made lightly.
“This decision was made by the regional forester here in California, this was her decision, in consultation with the forest supervisors at each of the 18 national forests, as well as other partners that we have including the Pacific Crest Trail Association.”
There were three main factors that went into the decision to lift the regional closure order. First, the fire risk is lessening in the rest of the country so more firefighting resources are expected to become available for California. Secondly, a regional closure order makes less sense because weather conditions across the state become more variable going into the fall, so the agency is planning on tailoring closures and other restrictions to local conditions. Lastly, visits to the forests decline significantly after Labor Day, reducing the risk of human-caused fires.
Most of the forests that remain closed are in Southern California.
“Four of those forests, specifically in Southern California -- the Angeles, San Bernardino, Cleveland and Los Padres -- those will go under a slight extension through next Wednesday, Sept. 22 and the Eldorado National Forest is still under closure order due to the Caldor Fire and that goes through Sept. 30.”
Even in the forests that are open to the public now, fire restrictions are still in place. Forest supervisors can still limit the use of open flames like campfires, charcoal and propane gas. For visitors to Mendocino National Forest, that means campfires, camp stoves and other sources of open flames are prohibited through Oct. 31. You can’t smoke outside during that time either; smoking will only be allowed inside an enclosed vehicle or building.
Individuals who violate the open flame restriction can be fined up to $5,000 and groups can be fined up to $10,000. There’s also the potential for up to 6 months of imprisonment, as well as the possibility of both fines and imprisonment.
Even though Mendocino National Forest has reopened to the public, it’s important to keep in mind that trails and campgrounds that were closed as a result of the August Complex fires will remain closed until further notice.
While the national forests were closed, Reho pointed out many of California’s state and national parks remained open during the Labor Day holiday. California State Parks and the National Parks Service manage those lands and have different priorities than the Forest Service.
“The U.S. Forest Service is administered under the U.S. Department of Agriculture whereas the National Parks Service is under the U.S. Department of the Interior. … If you look at the National Parks Service, they really stress recreation and preservation of specific lands, whereas the Forest Service, we’re a lot bigger.”
Alongside its decision to close the national forests, the Forest Service made another somewhat controversial decision to temporarily stop prescribed burns while firefighting resources remain limited, but fire ecologists think that’s the wrong move. Tune in Monday to find out more.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
