Edhat StaffSource: Los Padres National Forest
Los Padres National Forest officials today announced plans to begin implementing their annual prescribed burning operations on the Forest. When favorable weather conditions are present, specific project locations and dates will be shared on the Forest’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The objectives of the projects are to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire to people and communities, create conditions which offer a safer and more effective wildfire response, foster more resilient ecosystems, and minimize the effects of large wildfires on the landscape.
When implementing these projects, fire managers follow a burn plan that outlines the “prescription” or environmental conditions such as temperature, wind, fuel moisture, ventilation and relative humidity that need to be present before the project begins. When the criteria are met, crews implement, monitor, and patrol each burn to ensure it meets the goals and objectives outlined by managers. The prescribed fire program will continue through the winter and spring months as permitted by weather and other environmental factors.
Prescribed fires including both understory and pile burning are intended to reduce the amount of vegetation, such as needles, small plants, brush, and small trees which can carry fire from the forest floor into the treetops. Studies and experience have shown that prescribed fires stimulate the growth of grasses, forbs and shrubs that provide food for deer, mountain quail and other wildlife.
The ignition of all prescribed burns is dependent on the availability of personnel and equipment and appropriate conditions. Prescribed burn planning and execution are closely coordinated with the National Weather Service and Air Quality Management Districts in order to manage smoke production and minimize impacts as much as possible.
When these burns occur, information signs will be posted along the roadways to alert the public to the burning activity and subsequent visible smoke in the area.
For questions on the Los Padres prescribed fire program, please contact Forest Fuels Officer Nic Elmquist at (805) 961-5764.
Great job forest service. After the recent Thomas Fire, it is so clear how important it is to burn the hills periodically to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires during the worst of conditions like we just experienced. Many of the hills that burned, had not burned in decades. The fuel loads were incredible and the fire was essentially unstoppable. Politically it is a hot potato, and there are risks of any fire getting out of control, but IF we periodically burn all of the chaparral in sections, we will not experience this kind of calamity again.
I agree with Yeti — we need more prescribed (and unprescribed) burns. Let’s take advantage of our current recently burnt buffer to burn other areas, particularly when the moisture content is high and the fire perimeter will be more manageable.
Did you notice that the Los Padres National Forest officials failed to consider the impact that their prescribed burn policy fails to consider the impact it will have on wildlife and destruction of habitat, and reduction in pray animals that sustain them?
Prescribed burn activities are more about enriching fighters and destroying wildlife and their habitat, than fire suppression.
Contact your congressperson, and protest this destructive practice now. https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov39mail/ http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/
There are many challenges with prescribed burns in chaparral. The historic fire regime of chaparral is anywhere from 30-150 years or more. More frequent fires, or fires during the cool season, can eliminate chaparral by converting it to non-native weedlands which can be even more flammable than chaparral. So, if we are going to prescribe burn an area once every five years, or every ten years, or even every twenty years, it would convert chaparral to flammable non-native weeds. That would be counter-productive and place our communities at even greater risk.
It would be much more cost-effective to focus our efforts on creating defensible space immediately around structures, and reducing the vulnerability of structures with roof retrofits, dual-pane windows, screening on eaves and vents, and other retrofits that greatly increase the survivability of a home. With more homes encroaching into fire-prone areas, and more people, we also need to ensure that we look at new ways to prevent fires from starting in the first place. Otherwise, each year we will continue to see more and more fire starts, along with a greater chance of at least one of those fires becoming the next big one.
Animals typically do very well surviving wild fires. usually the worst thing is when massive swaths of their habitat is taken out and they have no place to recover from. Hence they fought like hell to save the condor preserve almost like they did around Ojai. prescribed burns allow animals to flee to shorter distances and recover quicker. 600 square miles of burn does not allow the same recovery. Once again someone anonymous spilling loose facts and trying to rouse outrage.
Chaparral relies on wildfires to thin out and to reproduce? What are you talking about? You can Wiki that. Defensible space is great for wildfires… We only lost a few structures here locally to wildfire even when armageddon was coming down at 70mph in the middle of the night. The issue is when you burn an entire mountain side that sits above a relatively populated area and there is a rainstorm that washed all that ash and muck down. By your description wildfires are natural. They re more like 10 to15 year natural… but even lets say 30. This area did not burn for way longer than that. We can’t afford to have that much area go at once… People die and our terrain changes all for the sake of not doing anything to effect the outcome. Bet you were happy to see them protect the condor preserve or did you want to see that go naturally as well?
Organizations like FOREST WATCH do all they can with lawsuits to try to prevent the management of the forest, and will send out press releases and comments to tell us how evil this practice is. But we saw with the Thomas Fire the direct result of the policy of stopping the burns. The accumulated dead brush of decades. Deadly.
Here are photos of Thomas Fire bears: https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Science-Institute/News/PostId/89/badly-burned-ursines-get-back-on-their-feet-thanks-to-teamwork-and-fish-skin …… I wouldn’t characterize your facts as “loose,” more like unsubstantiated. I presume you have no rebuttal against the fact that firefighters will be handsomely rewarded financially with the resumption of the long prohibited policy of prescribed burns. They sure don’t reward wildlife.
You can empathize with one single wild animal. So can I can and empathize with a lot of them at one time. This victim you re want to billboard is the result of a wildfire. The size of that fire determines the viability of this victims species. If we were to make the same analogy for global warming you would say its a natural cycle but I know that is not your take. This is a pattern we can attempt to control to mitigate loss of animal and human life. We are not talking about a wild life BBQ. We are talking about on wet days burning a couple acres at a time to create a fire line that will net keep things manageable in the future. Its been done before we were here. even indians did it…
Native Americans used fire to control their farming. Or did they not farm? I can’t teach you life experience in a couple sentences. You will need to start working on your thesis. I hope its good and it helps the world. The “ultimate” conclusion is not set yet and you have no idea what it is no do I. Thats nothing to do with evolution its to dow its your incapability to understand that we live with nature not for it.
Prescribed burning is not a scientifically supported technique for chaparral. We would be wise to look at how the National Park Service is addressing this issue in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which — like our mountains — is dominated by chaparral and surrounded by at-risk communities. From the NPS’s web page titled Why This Park Does Not Use Prescribed Fire: “Prescribed burning is not effective in limiting the spread of wildfires under the conditions that burn the largest amount of land and cause the most home losses. Native shrublands are being burned too frequently because of human ignited wildfires. Prescribed fire does not fulfill any identified ecological need in chaparral or coastal sage scrub and would increase the probability of a damaging short fire interval following a prescribed burn. The most effective fire management strategies to protect local communities and the native ecosystem in the SMMNRA are to: PREVENT WILDFIRES, especially during severe weather conditions. Plan and implement effective SUPPRESSION strategies during severe weather conditions. Create defensible space from the house-out.”