Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire
On March 30, 2022, California Governor Newsom’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force released the Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire. The plan will expand the use of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and fire managed for resource benefit—collectively referred to as beneficial fire--in order to significantly improve the resilience of California’s fire-dependent ecosystems. The trailblazing new plan provides a roadmap to significantly increase the pace and scale of these forest management activities through 2025.
Image right: Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire, 2022.
Science in Brief: Higher Incidence of High-Severity Fire is Associated with Industrially Managed Forests
As reported in this recent important study, there is
a greater likelihood of high severity fire being located on industrial lands as compared to other lands. High-severity fire incidence was also found to be greater in areas adjacent to private industrial land. Together, the authors conclude that the prevailing forest management practices on private industrial timberland may increase high-severity fire occurrence.
Image above right: Industrial plantations burned with high intensity in King Fire, El Dorado National Forest, 2014
Spotlight on Species: Kit-kit-dizze (Chamaebatia foliolosa)
Kit-kit-dizze--also known as mountain misery, bear clover, and bear mat--may well be the most emblematic plant of any occurring in the understory of the forests of the Sierra Nevada. It’s endemic to California (that means, it doesn’t occur anywhere else in the world), and the heart of its distribution is here in the Sierra Nevada. Read more
Image right: Chamaebatia foliolosa by Stan Shebs
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"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise."
~Aldo Leopold