Stopping Wildfire before it Starts

Fires in California continue to set new records for the “largest,” “most damaging,” “worst air quality,” and “most costly” we’ve ever seen.

THE PROBLEM

What’s causing this dramatic turn for the worse? It’s driven by many factors including extreme weather, past land use decisions and a century of forest and wildfire mismanagement, leaving many communities and natural lands a spark away from catastrophe.

Some of the factors that shape the frequency and severity of wildfire in California, like drought, record high temperatures and strong winds are beyond our control and in many cases, exacerbated by a changing climate. Other factors, such as how we manage our fire-adapted conifer forests, where we build homes and how we prepare and protect our communities are within our control.

It is important to note that the causes and consequences of this extreme fire pattern vary across ecosystems in California. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Solutions in the forested Sierra Nevada and other fire-prone forests look very different from those in the shrub-dominated California coast and foothills. With this in mind, we must move quickly and strategically to act where we can, and we must tailor our strategies to the different environments and the challenges they face.

HOW WE CAN START FIXING IT

While we can’t stop this problem overnight, there are two things we need to invest in immediately to better protect people and nature in the face of wildfire: forest restoration and fire resilient communities.

Science shows that forest restoration – controlled burns and ecological thinning to remove small trees and brush that ignite fire – delivers a one-two punch, reducing the risk of megafires in fire-adapted conifer forests, like the Sierra, while allowing fire to be safely reintroduced with many ecological benefits.

It is also critical that we make all communities in fire-prone regions more resilient by taking measures to make homes less flammable, improving response and evacuation plans, giving homeowners in risky places the option to move and building new communities in the right places.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND FOREST RESTORATION

Our just-released paper, Wildfires and Forest Resilience: the case for ecological forestry in the Sierra Nevada, cites over 130 scientific studies to make the scientific case for ecological forestry as the best solution to combat megafires in California’s fire-adapted conifer forests. Our major findings are:

• Ecological thinning, combined with controlled burns and managed wildfires, can significantly reduce the risk of megafires in fire-adapted conifer forests and create healthier forests that are more resilient to fire, drought and climate change, with significant benefits for air quality, water quality, carbon storage and wildlife habitat.
• Addressing the megafire threat in forests will require applying ecological forestry at a landscape scale, like our French Meadows project and the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative in the northern Sierra.

READ THE WILDFIRES AND FOREST RESILIENCE PAPER

In the fire-adapted forests of the Sierra Nevada and other parts of the state (such as the southern Cascades around Mt. Lassen and the Klamath-Siskiyou region of northern California), decades of aggressive fire suppression following intensive logging that removed many of the large, fire-resistant trees have left these forests overly dense. A healthy forest would have more frequent, less intense fires to clear small trees and brush. By suppressing these fires, small trees and brush become the fuel that can turn fires into megafires.

Through the practice of ecological thinning, we can promote healthier forests and create conditions under which controlled and managed fire can be safe and effective. Ecological thinning does not mean clearcutting, old-growth forest logging or extensive salvage logging after fires. It is explicitly focused on protecting the oldest trees and creating a diverse mosaic of natural features that are essential for forest diversity and regeneration.

Forest restoration plays an important role in protecting the many critical values conifer forests provide for people and nature, such as clean water (60% of California’s clean water supply comes from Sierra Nevada forests), clean air, carbon storage, recreation and wildlife habitat. These values are increasingly threatened by megafires. By protecting our forests from extreme fire, we are protecting the forests’ ability to store carbon over the long term, an important tool in our fight against climate change. We are also protecting important wildlife species like the California spotted owl from critical habitat loss.

INVESTING IN RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

In the face of megafires, we have a responsibility to invest in and create fire resilient communities. To do this, we must thoughtfully consider where we build new homes for California’s ever-growing population, as well as how we adapt our existing communities to deal with the escalating threat of fires.

This is particularly true in the coastal and foothill regions of central and southern California, where many people live within and next to highly flammable shrublands. In these areas, vegetation management and controlled burns may make matters worse. Our best defense in these areas is a robust investment in community protection measures focused on preventing human-caused ignitions and creating fire resilient communities.

For communities that have already been established in high-risk fire areas, we must make those homes and communities more resilient to fire through fire-safe building retrofit incentives, science-based defensible space programs, evacuation planning and prevention of human-caused  ignitions. Developing updated Disaster Preparedness Plans and investing in early detection and fire suppression systems in the most dangerous weather conditions can also further protect communities.

We also need to rethink the land-use policies that put people in harm’s way. We need new policies that provide incentives to build in safe and sustainable locations. We also must ask hard questions in the face of these fires – such as how do we respond to increasing risks from climate change factors including fire, floods and rising sea levels? We need new solutions to incentivize building in locations that enhance public safety and make our communities more resilient.

In places like the Sierra Nevada, resilient communities require smart development planning AND healthy forest management. In more shrub-dominated landscapes, smart decisions about where and how we build our communities and identifying measures to reduce ignitions can greatly reduce risk to people, making their homes more secure.

WHAT WE’RE DOING AND HOW YOU CAN HELP

TNC is hard at work to break the cycle of disastrous megafires in the Sierra Nevada through on-the-ground science, education and advocacy. Informed by science, TNC is advocating for increased funding and policies that:

• Promote forest restoration and fuels reduction in fire-adapted forests like the Sierra Nevada, through controlled burning and ecological thinning
• Take a landscape scale approach to forest restoration by planning and managing for restoration across multiple watersheds and prioritize restoration in the places and at the scale where it will have the greatest impact
• Invest in policies and programs that promote fire resilient communities by directing growth away from high fire risk zones and creating options – including both fire-hardening and relocation – for people already in harm’s way

Forest Restoration

On the forest restoration front, California is off to a good start, but there is still a great deal of work to be done to protect our forests and communities. To further advance forest restoration, and fight climate change, we urge legislators to support:

• Assembly Bill 1659 (Assembly Members Bloom & Mullin) would address climate change and wildfire risk in California by prioritizing landscape-scale actions to increase fire preparedness, public safety, community protection and enhance forest health. The bill would provide $500 million for immediate wildfire response and another $2.5 billion over time for climate resiliency and fire risk reduction projects to protect communities from megafires.
• Dedicated funding for forest management – In 2018, the State committed $200 million per year for 5 years for forest thinning and forest health projects from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. We must renew our commitment to this important funding to curb megafires.
• The Climate Bond – With only 3.1% of Governor Newsom’s proposed 2020-21 budget dedicated to natural resources (a decrease from the 2019-20 budget of over $1 million dollars), the Climate Bond (Senate Bill 45 and Assembly Bill 3256) is a critical tool to help fill the funding void. If passed by the California legislature, the “Wildfire Prevention, Safe Drinking Water, Drought Preparation, and Flood Protection Bond Act” would be placed on the November 2020 ballot, giving voters the ability to support investments that would curb megafires and reduce the impacts of floods, droughts, excessive heat and sea level rise in California, including funding for home hardening and defensible space protection.

Federal Forest Restoration 

While the state legislature is taking important steps to curb megafires, we also need a comparable investment in California’s forests from the federal government. It is now more important than ever that we consider our country’s readiness to fight wildfires amidst the challenges of COVID-19.

It is critical that Congress ensure sufficient resources are available as the wildfire season begins, especially in the West. Federal, state and local wildland firefighting departments across the country will need support to ensure firefighters are able to mobilize and coordinate in a safe manner.

Investments in our forests through restoration, construction and maintenance will not only reduce fire risks but also increase the ability of our forests to provide valuable public benefits–including a resilient water supply, carbon storage, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities–while supporting quality local jobs, keeping communities healthy and safe and reducing risk of damage to public infrastructure.

Fire Resilient Communities

To advance fire resilient communities, we urge state legislators to support:

• Assembly Bill 3074 (Assembly Member Friedman) would protect Californians living in high fire hazard areas by modernizing defensible space protections through the creation of a third defensible space zone called an ember-resistant zone. This zone occurs within the first five feet of a structure and fuel sources in these areas increase the probability of structure fires.
• Assembly Bill 3164 (Assembly Member Friedman) would develop a wildland-urban interface wildfire risk model to empower local communities to better understand and reduce their wildfire risk.

But these actions are just the start. We must break down the barriers to developing and implementing critical forest restoration and fuels reduction projects while maintaining environmental safeguards. Finally, we need policies and programs to make communities safer by directing growth away from high hazard zones and investing in measures that will reduce risks for existing communities.

MORE SCIENCE & CASE STUDIES

In the Sierra Nevada, TNC’s science is leading the way in better defining the problems facing our forests and solutions by:

• Setting out a scientific case for ecological forestry as the linchpin strategy for reducing the risk of megafires in our forests
• Prioritizing Sierra watersheds for restoration with respect to biodiversity value and risk to communities
• Showing partners that investing in ecological forestry makes economic sense and also benefits people and nature

Here are three pilot projects underway in the Sierra Nevada that helped inform our forest restoration recommendations to curb the cycle of megafires.

CASE STUDY #1: INDEPENDENCE LAKE PRESERVE

TNC is using our 2,325 acre Independence Lake Preserve, located in the northern Sierra Nevada near Truckee, as a demonstration site for forest restoration. High-severity wildfire is a significant threat to the water supply, neighboring communities and wildlife that thrive here. Since 2010, TNC has used ecological thinning and controlled burning to reduce wildfire risk and promote healthier, more resilient forests at the preserve.

CASE STUDY #2:  FRENCH MEADOWS FOREST RESTORATION PROJECT

TNC is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service, Placer County Water Agency, Placer County, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, American River Conservancy and the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at UC Merced to restore 28,000 acres of forest in the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the American River, just west of Lake Tahoe. We believe this partnership can serve as a model to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration on national forest lands throughout the Sierra. TNC just published a Lessons Learned Paper on behalf of the French Meadows partners summarizing the elements that were key determinants to the success of our partnership and making policy and practice recommendations for future partnerships.

Key elements of the project include:

• Collaborative management, allowing the project to advance quickly and efficiently
• Funding from a wide variety of federal, state, local and private sources
• Shared stewardship to accelerate on-the-ground restoration with TNC helping to direct use of prescribed fire
• Research on how forest restoration benefits water supply and forest health
• Innovative planning, including use of state-of-the-art fire behavior modeling

CASE STUDY #3: TAHOE-CENTRAL SIERRA INITIATIVE

Independence Lake and French Meadows are part of the much larger Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI), covering approximately 2.4 million acres around Lake Tahoe and the central Sierra Nevada. TNC is part of a diverse coalition bringing together innovative approaches to increase the pace and scale of restoration work across this entire region. The TCSI initiative is improving the health and resiliency of forest ecosystems and communities by:

• Raising federal, state and private funding
• Using a rigorous planning and analytic process (co-led by TNC) to develop forest restoration approaches that can influence the entire landscape
• Analyzing the benefits to clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat and other values from implementing the forest restoration scenarios

DEFINITIONS:

1. MEGAFIRE: a fast-moving, high intensity forest fire that burns a large area, typically 100,000 acres or more
2. FOREST RESTORATION / ECOLOGICAL FORESTRY: the use of forest thinning in combination with controlled burns, where it is safe and appropriate, to reduce high fuel loads that contribute to megafires
3. FOREST THINNING: strategically removing smaller trees and brush from conifer forests that fuel megafires
4. CONTROLLED BURN: an intentionally-ignited fire contained within a designated area. the goal is to remove highly-flammable undergrowth (and thus reduce the risk of megafire) while promoting healthier forest conditions
5. MANAGED WILDFIRE: lightning-ignited fires that can be safely managed for the benefit of nature while reducing the risk of future megafires

Our work to curb the cycle of megafires is far from over. TNC is uniquely positioned to protect our fire-adapted forests and help communities prepare for climate-exacerbated natural disasters. Let’s stop making history and start fixing the problem.