Bringing an End to Fire Suppression: Why We Need Private Landowners to Burn Their Own Forests

As the recent Kincade and Getty fires illustrate all too tragically, California has a serious fire problem. Over 100 years of fire suppression, exacerbated by complex factors like urban sprawl, climate change, and dispossession of indigenous lands and traditional burning practices, have been increasing the severity of these runaway, devastating fires. In an effort to address these dangers, and reintroduce fire in a safe manner, the UC Cooperative Extension is teaching landowners in the Sierra Nevada forests how to practice prescribed burning on their own properties.

These workshops teach private landowners that fire is an integral part of the natural disturbance regime and that frequent, low-intensity, seasonal fires are good for the ecosystem; they promote resilience, keep fuel loads low, and create heterogeneity that provides critical habitats and biodiversity. Fire suppression, the practice of extinguishing all, even naturally ignited, fires, prevents flame from doing its ecological work to reduce debris and prevent overgrowth. As a result, today’s forests are overly dense, which puts them at increased risk of high severity fires, endangering human lives and communities, and inhibiting ecosystem regeneration.

The map of Baker Forest, located in Plumas County, California.

“The goal of these workshops is to give [private landowners] knowledge and experience to prescribe fire on their own land,” said Rob York, a Cooperative Extension Specialist and Adjunct Professor of Forest Ecology and Silviculture at UC Berkeley, who directed the workshop on October 18th and 19th. This workshop was the first to take place in Plumas County, including both classroom education on fire techniques and behavior, and hands-on burning experience in Baker Forest, a research forest owned and managed by UC Berkeley. Over the past three years, York has led similar workshops throughout the Sierras, including El Dorado, Calaveras, Butte, and Amador Counties. 

The classroom portion has two basic components; ecology and logistics. It begins with inspiration; explaining the role that fire once had in the forests of California and why it is so critical to this ecosystem, and the negative impacts of its exclusion. “We start by encouraging them to think of fire as helpful, not hurtful, and really try to build the desire to burn,” said York. The second component focuses on the logistics of burning, such as where to plan a burn on one’s property to keep it safe and contained, when to burn, how to obtain permits, and which agencies to notify.

Rob York, Adjunct Associate Professor of Forestry at UC Berkeley, takes a measurement from the site's 10-hour fuel sicks. (Source: Annapurna Holtzapple)

So on Friday afternoon, October 18th, after a morning of discussion about the steps to plan a burn, the group donned hard hats, leather gloves, and bright yellow, high-visibility flame resistant jackets. Gathered at the southern boundary of Baker Forest, the landowners listened to a burn briefing from “Burn Boss” Ariel Roughton, the Interim Research Stations Manager for Berkeley Forests. (“Burn Boss” is the term used for a prescribed fire supervisor.) 

These briefings have three components; reviewing the weather forecast, safety procedures, and objectives. This burn had four objectives; to reintroduce fire into the ecosystem, reduce fuel loads, limit overstory tree mortality, and “to get you all experienced to facilitate fire.” The safety briefing focused on reviewing map orientation, the burn boundaries, the exits and entrances to the burn site, and the designated safety site. The weather briefing reviewed projections for wind, humidity, and temperature, factors that are critical to fire behavior and spread. Roughton and York also commented on the requirements for on-site containment resources; at least 5 personnel (there were over 30 in attendance), 5-gallon backpack pumps, and a Type 6 Engine, meaning a vehicle with a 525-gallon water tank.

Then the group set off to “check the prescription” and assess the 10-hour fuel sticks located in the burn site. These sticks are a tool - thin, specialized pieces of wood used to monitor the humidity conditions in the forest before the burn begins. They had been monitored for weeks leading up to the burn, and today’s measurement was the latest of many status checks. “10-hour” means these wooden pieces are between 0.25-1 inches in diameter and refers to the amount of time necessary for the sticks to sit in the forest to adjust to 76% of the surrounding relative humidity.

As an educational workshop, the main emphasis was to provide the attendees with measurable field metrics, ways to easily see whether the conditions were good for a safe fire. Using a pocket weather meter, York checked and compared the location-specific temperature and relative humidity to the ranges written in the prescription. Additionally, he taught the group a “Snap Test” for pine needles, assessing whether they bend or break between one’s fingers. While colloquial, this is a quantifiable way to evaluate whether pine needles on the ground will actually burn. 

This condition assessment confirmed we were towards the low end of “the prescription,” meaning it was wet and the fire would be a “dirty burn” creating patchiness rather than uniformity. While this type of burn better mimics the natural ecological processes of a healthy fire regime, it doesn’t reduce the fuel load as much as a “clean”, even underburn. Roughton explained that the purpose of continuing with the burn under these conditions was to meet the objective of providing experience. “The folks that come to these workshops tend to already have an interest in fire. They’ve contemplated the benefits, but aren’t comfortable [with fire] yet and not ready to burn on their own,” she said later.

“This experience component is really unique,” York told me. “Landowners don’t have any other opportunity like this, to actually participate in a burn.” For safety and liability reasons, the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection (Cal Fire) doesn’t allow non-firefighters to participate in a burn, and large agencies have a regulatory reluctance to support burning conducted by landowners. UCANR’s workshop is the only program that allows people who aren’t trained firefighters to participate in prescribed burning.

The next step of a controlled burn is to light a test fire. “A test-fire is when we put a little fire on the ground and see how it behaves before we commit to burning the whole area,” said Roughton. The test-fire happened to be near a large sugar pine, York explained that large overstory trees rarely die from these low severity burns, but that prolonged periods of smoldering of litter around the base can be dangerous. The continuous heat penetrates the bark and kills the cambium, he explained, telling the landowners that one can rake the duff away from around the base of a tree to protect it.

Workshop attendees raking a fire line to prepare for the test-fire. (Source: Annapurna Holtzapple)

Before the burn was lit, Les Hall, a member of the Maidu Tribe, performed a land acknowledgment. Baker Forest is on Maidu Territory, and controlled burning is a practice that the Maidu have been using for generations. Hall addressed the group, explaining that this was his ancestral land and that normally a ceremony takes place before burning with a native plant. Holding a sprig of incense-cedar, he spoke in Maidu to honor the land and then translated his words into English. Part of his acknowledgment included, “The splendid smoke, good for this Earth and all creatures that live within it. It is a good day.”

Following Hall’s land acknowledgment, the test fire was ignited with drip torches - cans of fuel with a wick on one end - along the fire line. The test fire confirmed that the fire would be a “dirty burn” and the crew proceeded with demonstrations of pile burning, and a tour of a smoldering site burned the Tuesday prior. Before splitting up, Roughton and York took further questions about different types of fire plans, assessing wind, and observing an underburn. 

The test-fire, a smaller burn lit to see how flame will behave in a specific site under specific conditions. (Source: Annapurna Holtzapple)

York then took half of the group on a tour of the already-burned site to demonstrate different fire lines and how to “mop up” a burn. Mopping up refers to dousing a fire, reinforcing the burn perimeter, and ensuring there is no threat of escape. The burn site was still smoking and smoldering as the group inspected the area. York explained, “I’ll let it go because it’s doing work, it’s meeting my objective,” and explained that with monitoring and evaluation of the fire and weather conditions, allowing small flames to continue to burn continues to reduce fuel and later fire hazard. 

Roughton demonstrated pile burning, explaining how and when to pile debris, how to dry them out, and pile placement. Then the landowners lit these piles, practicing monitoring to prevent any escapes, and “chunking in” piles when the fire burns low and the debris needs to be re-centered. 

A demonstration of pile burning occurs during the workshop. (Source: Annapurna Holtzapple)

The burn was successful, safe, and gave the attendees tangible knowledge of the feasibility of burning. But there is still a large jump from participating in a burn to conducting a fire independently. Roughton reflected, “I don’t know how much people are actually walking away from this and doing their own burning, but even if it just increases pile burning, that would be great.” She added, “It’s great to see landowners and people from these agencies come together and talk, there is definitely an increase in understanding, and that’s the first hurdle. So I look at these workshops and find them very productive, they bring a lot of folks together to discuss the same goals and form a community network.” 

“The Sierras need frequent fire in order to persist as a forest ecosystem. Policy centered solely around fire suppression has removed a critical aspect of Sierra Nevada ecology that people like Rob and Ariel are working to reintroduce,” said Ursula Harwood, a UC Berkeley senior who assisted at the workshop, and is writing her thesis on prescribed burning in the Sierras. This program is the beginning of what York and Roughton hope can fundamentally shift the disturbance regime and restore resiliency to forests in the Sierra Nevadas. According to York, half of the forests in the Sierras are owned privately, and of that 65% is non-industrial, meaning held by individuals rather than for-profit timber companies. 

“Collectively, private landowners are my great hope for reintroducing fire,” said York. Because so much of these lands are held privately, and bureaucracy limits Cal Fire’s ability to act and take advantage of small windows of opportunity for burning, both York and Roughton see landowners as a necessary part of restoring resiliency and health to our forests and mitigating the risk of massive, runaway wildfires. Roughton added, “We can’t have the desired impact without them.”