CA Fire Prevention Initiative Expands Controlled Burns

ACROSS CALIFORNIA — The explosive growth of wildfires in recent years has compelled California to develop new mitigation strategies, and the Golden State now plans to fight fire with fire.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced an ambitious forest management plan, a key element of which is the expansion of prescribed fires and cultural burning.

At the center of the Newsom’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire is a plan to expand "beneficial fires."

The agency aims to expand beneficial fires to 400,000 acres annually by 2025, a shared goal between state, federal, tribal, and local entities, the Governor’s office said in a statement Wednesday.

The state’s overall goal is to treat one million acres annually in California by 2025.

The plan to expand controlled burns comes amid what's been called the “era of the megafire.”

In 2021, 8,367 known California wildfires had torn through nearly 3.1 million acres. Three of those blazes are among the 20 largest in state history, according to Cal Fire.

The previous year was worse, with 9,279 reported blazes torching a state record 4.2 million acres.

All but two of the 20 largest wildfires in state history have occurred in the last 18 years. Six of the state's seven largest wildfires have occurred in the last two years, and 13 of the state's 20 larges fires have burned since 2017, according to Cal Fire.

Increasingly hotter and drier weather is a major factor in the explosion of wildfires in recent years, and forest overgrowth — the result of decades of overly aggressive fire suppression efforts, in the view of many experts — and the encroachment of development into forests have exacerbated fire dangers.

"As climate change continues to exacerbate wildfire conditions, we’re bringing federal, state, tribal, and local partners together to more effectively address the scale of this crisis,” Newsom said in a statement.

“California is putting in the work to help protect our communities from the devastating impacts of wildfires, build for the long-term, and safeguard our treasured state for generations to come.”

Key elements of the plan include the establishment of a new Prescribed Fire Claims Fund to reduce liability for private burners, beginning a statewide program to enable tribes and cultural fire practitioners to revitalize cultural burning practices, and the creation of a prescribed fire training center that will grow, train, and diversify the state’s prescribed fire workforce.

Other elements of the plan include the creation of an interagency beneficial fire tracking system and pilot projects to conduct larger landscape-scale burns.

“California’s Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire demonstrates the collaborative commitment to expand the use of restorative fire to limit damaging wildfires, stabilize forest carbon, better protect communities, and restore and maintain resiliency and biodiversity in the California landscape,” Craig Thomas, Director, The Fire Restoration Group said in a statement.

“This past year of collaborative work with State and Federal agencies, scientists, and multiple non-governmental partners has addressed and supported the proper role of restorative fire in California.”

The state last year invested $1.5 billion in forest management and wildfire resilience. An additional $1.2 billion investment is proposed for the next two fiscal years, the Governor’s office said.

“California's Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire takes an unprecedented step for the state to address shortcomings of current fire policy and use. Most significant is the recognition of the role of Native American tribes, organizations and practitioners to revitalize traditional fire stewardship,” Cal State Chico Professor and cultural fire practitioner Don Hawkins said in a statement.