Some work to restore and rebuild after the Camp Fire is easy to see: Full-on debris cleanup. Cutting down dead and dying trees, to make room for returning residents and their camp trailers and fifth wheels. And new houses, springing up like mushrooms in the forest.
Other work is not so visible—including planning, in all its phases, and partnerships that come into view only if you know where to look.
Getting up to speed on longer term change was the point of last Friday’s 13th Annual Wildfire Safety Planning Summit, a half-day meeting hosted in Paradise by the Butte County Fire Safe Council.
That funny word now common in fire safety circles—“WOO—eee” or W-U-I, for Wildland-Urban Interface—was the central focus. With so many Californians living in areas vulnerable to wildfire, the challenge is keeping communities safe while also supporting healthy ecosystems.
Which is why CAL FIRE, the Butte Fire Safe Council, and partner agencies are developing—and continuously update—the Community Wildfire Protection Plan or CWPP. “Firewise communities,” self-directed, self-help efforts by residents to make their homes and landscaping more resistant to wildfires, is another key piece—a focus that may make it easier to get fire insurance.
But forests have to change too. “Most of us haven’t seen a healthy forest in our lifetimes,” said Wolfie Rougle of the Butte County Resource Conservation District. The county’s upcoming Forest Action Plan will help, starting with a watershed-by-watershed assessment. Future forests here will be less dense, she predicted, with fewer conifers and more oaks and grasslands—woodlands more resilient to both wildland fire and climate change.
Prescribed fire, or using low-intensity fire to thin overgrown vegetation and prevent full-scale conflagration, was another summit theme. Ali Meders-Knight of Chico’s Mechoopda Tribe pointed to fire as part of the place-based, traditional land management practices that co-evolved among native people, plants, and animals to create California’s natural landscape.
But preventive fire alone won’t cure the ills of California’s forests, another summit theme, at least initially. Physically removing “excess biomass,” with chainsaws, masticators, and bulldozers, is the key focus now—emergency action. Short of burning it, releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere, what can we do with all those big sticks and slash piles?
There are many options, according to the Sierra Institute, from firewood, wood pellets, and wood chips for landscaping to bioplastics, biochar, and generating heat and power—including hybrid solar-biomass microgrids.
Citizens can see the living results of forest thinning work to date on Forest Health Tours offered next spring; attend Forest Health events, including land restoration workshops; and take classes in Firescaping, or how to landscape for fire safety. For more information, contact the Butte County Fire Safe Council.
