For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Monday, Sept. 20. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Prescribed burns aren’t happening on Forest Service land right now and it’s unclear when that’s going to change, but it needs to be sooner rather than later according to the people who study the intersection of forests and fires.
Last month, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service sent a letter to forest managers saying prescribed burns are effectively banned on Forest Service land because firefighting resources across the country are too strained. Prescribed burns will only be considered for approval if the regional forester and chief’s office sign off on it. And that’s only if the region is at a preparedness level of 2 or less.
An organization called the National Multi-Agency Coordination Group assigns those preparedness levels to regions and the country as a whole based on factors like the number of large fires happening at that moment and the availability of firefighting resources. Right now, the country and northern California are at a 5, on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest. Firefighting resources are basically at capacity.
But that decision didn’t go over too well with fire and forest scientists. Forty of them signed a letter asking Chief Randy Moore to bring decision-making on prescribed burns back to the forest and district levels. They say that makes more sense since conditions in some regions are ideal for prescribed burns right now and the window of time available for setting those fires is small.
Moore has yet to respond to that letter.
“Just because prescribed fires aren’t actively happening doesn’t mean that the Forest Service employees are not trying to get that on the landscape.”
Angela Chongpinitchai is Mendocino National Forest’s forest fires planner and fuels specialist and she may be difficult to hear at times because she was calling in from the front lines of the Dixie Fire. She says she can’t address the letter or speak for the chief, but says neither she nor the agency are strangers to the benefits of prescribed fires.
“It increases resiliency to pathogens and pests, it increases biodiversity of both plants and wildlife, it creates more desirable wildlife habitat in those mosaic patches and it maximizes carbon sequestration in the trees.”
Chongpinitchai says prescribed burns are still a priority for the Forest Service and it hasn’t stopped working toward expanding the use of prescribed fires on its land.
Last year Gov. Newsom and the Forest Service entered into the Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California’s Forest and Rangelands. Even though it’s not binding, the Forest Service and state agree to reducing wildfire risk on 500,000 acres of land each per year. Some of that risk reduction includes ramping up prescribed burns.
“Prescribed fire is something that’s great and it’s something that we try to promote. It’s much more challenging than I think folks understand. Even firefighters may not understand how hard it is to get a prescribed burn planned and implemented.”
The Mendocino National Forest has been working on getting prescribed fires started on 650,000 acres of the forest since August 2019. Right now the forestwide prescribed fire project is going through the environmental assessment process. The project will also need clearance from agencies like the California Air Resources Board and State Water Resources Control Board.
“This project specifically for the Mendocino is going to allow us more flexibility to have more windows of opportunity to get more prescribed fire acres accomplished each year. It doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing it, it’s just not at the level and scale that needs to be done to treat the acres of forest out west.”
Even after the assessments and the clearances, Chongpinitchai says prescribed burns can only happen within small windows of time, which is what the fire and forest scientists wrote in their letter. That window isn’t open yet for the Mendocino National Forest. Chongpinitchai says they need to wait for fuel moisture to increase, for winds to die down and possibly for the temperature to decrease, too. The variability of the landscape also has to be factored in since the two recent fires that swept through Mendocino National Forest altered the forest ecosystems.
“So with this project, we will have different goals depending on where we’re implementing it in the forest. So it could be something like cleaning up the fuels that are left from these catastrophic wildfires or it could be going in for the first time and introducing fire to a green area that has not had fire, but needs fire.”
In the meantime, the Forest Service has been implementing other fuels reduction projects that will complement the prescribed burns.
“It’s situationally dependent. Some areas will benefit from something like mastication or any other removal of fuel buildup and other places, you’re using prescribed fire hand-in-hand with those types of fuels treatments.”
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.
