More prescribed fire may be on its way to Mendocino National Forest

For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Nov. 12. I’m Sonia Waraich.

Catastrophic wildfires are growing in size every year, threatening lives, communities and entire ecosystems. Historically, the U.S. Forest Service’s approach to managing fires was to suppress them at all costs. Now, the agency is recognizing that intentionally setting low-intensity fires in the forest can help control the way fires burn there in the future by leaving less flammable material on the ground.

A few weeks ago, the Forest Service reached an important step in being able to conduct prescribed fires more frequently in Mendocino National Forest. The agency released an environmental assessment for its prescribed fire and fuels management strategy in the forest. It’s been working on the assessment since 2019.

The assessment states that the agency can’t control the weather or the way Mendocino National Forest is laid out, but it can control one of the three variables related to wildland fires: the amount of flammable material, or fuels, in the forest.

It’s a sunny weekend in October and the U.S. Forest Service is leading a trip through the Mendocino National Forest. They’re taking a group of us through the burn scar of the August Complex fires that happened last year.

We get a panoramic view of the forest as we head uphill. Most of it is burnt, but there’s one noticeable patch of green that pops out in the otherwise charred landscape. Amy Galetka is a fuels specialist and she explains how that area is green because of an escaped prescribed fire, known as the Baseball Fire, that burned there a few months before the August Complex. 

“The only other very small patch of green I found was from a prescribed fire we did in 2019.”

Galetka says more prescribed fire projects like that can ensure the forest stays healthy even if an unplanned fire passes through the area. But it’s going to take some time to get to the point where the agency can rely on prescribed fires exclusively. That’s because the forest was historically managed for timber production and, as a result, the way it’s structured doesn’t make much sense from a fire and fuels perspective.

“It was originally, I don’t know it was from the 60s or 70s, it’s fairly old, but it was set up as a timber project, so the units, as far as a pure fire and fuels standpoint, made absolutely no sense. They’re small, they’re not continuous. And pretty much none of them survived the fire well.”

“The hope going forward is to make the units that we bake make more sense together from a fire and fuels perspective, not necessarily just taking into account timber and then trying to make them more continuous.”

The environmental assessment for the prescribed fire and fuels management strategy in Mendocino National Forest is going to allow the Forest Service to do landscape-wide fire management instead of focusing on individual, smaller projects that don’t really end up influencing fire behavior much.

But you can’t start conducting those prescribed fires right away. The forest has become overgrown as a result of past management practices. Galetka says thinning needs to be done in those areas first. 

“Prescribed fire, you have to have very set conditions. If it’s too thick, it’s going to burn too hot or too cold. So it’s really hard to control the fire if the fuels are too thick to begin with. It’s hard enough when the fuels are ideal to get the fire effects that you want and maintain control versus having fuels that are too thick and it just makes it that much harder. You need to have that many more staff to maintain things with prescribed fire. I mean, eventually, once you’ve had a few entries, you’ve done thinning, you’ve had one underburn go through, after that, yeah it gets easier and easier. You can start maintaining everything just with prescribed fire, and it’s not everywhere. Not everywhere needs to have some sort of mechanical intervention first, but most places will.”

Ann Carlson is the forest supervisor at Mendocino and she explains why it’s important to burn the slash that results from that thinning in burn piles.

“When we’ve gone back and done the visiting of where we’ve done treatment, if we’re only part way through the plan, like we thinned the trees and we have piles underneath, a lot of times you’ll see piles. But we didn’t burn the piles. Then when the wildfire came through, it actually ended up killing the trees. Even though they were nicely spaced, we had these loads of fuels that burned under a wildfire situation versus our controlled pile burning, which then, like you say, we get the right conditions and it doesn’t get too hot.”

“You rearranged the fuels, but did not reduce the fuel loading.”

“Yeah exactly.”

A draft of the environmental assessment is currently available for review until Nov. 22. You can visit KZYX’s Report For America partner The Mendocino Voice at mendovoice.com if you’d like to find out more about the Forest Service’s prescribed fire and fuels strategy for Mendocino National Forest.

For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast wherever you get your podcasts.