What are the risks of wildfire in Placer County?
Placer County was ranked the highest county for wildfire risk within the United States in 2020. This is due to increasing development and population growth, especially in rural areas and Wildland Urban Interfaces (WUI) of the county, together with climate change causing increasingly hotter and drier conditions each year.
What are fuels and fuel treatments?
Fuels are basically any vegetation or other material that can burn within a forest or developed area. They include everything from pine needles, grasses, and small twigs to progressively larger fuels such as shrubs, branches, trees, and logs. Unfortunately, structures and infrastructure can also serve as fuels in a fire.
Fuel treatments are done to reduce forest fuels to lower the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Treatments include prescribed burning, pruning/ limbing with hand tools, and mechanical removal of understory vegetation, such as through mastication or mowing. Placer Land Trust (PLT) carefully selects treatments to help reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire on our properties we own.
What fuels treatment does Placer Land Trust perform?
PLT performs fuels reduction work on land we own (which we call our “fee title lands”). Additionally, sometimes we can advise and provide resources to landowners of our conservation easements. We follow the legal obligations set by the 2020 Placer County Vegetation Ordinance and CAL FIRE’s defensible space prescriptions, which provides for 100’ buffers around houses and structures, and a minimum of 10’ buffers along roadways.
In addition, PLT leases the majority of our fee title lands out for cattle grazing, which provides significant fuels management benefits. Where it makes sense, we also implement fuel break and forest thinning projects on our preserves and we are assessing the feasibility of prescribed burning as a management tool.
How do active fuels management and natural processes work together?
Fuels reduction work is typically targeted to areas that are accessible, closer to communities and development, and/or that have a history of fire suppression and overcrowding of forests. In maturing forests, active fuels management can often taper off and switch to less frequent treatments, and preferably more natural approaches like managed burning to maintain the forest. In remote, steep landscapes, active management is often infeasible due to accessibility. Across our larger, more remote landscapes, the goal is for maturing forests and lower-intensity fire regimes to eventually work together to create a more balanced system that is less prone to catastrophic, high-intensity fire. A more fire-resilient landscape benefits both human communities and natural ecosystems.
What are the challenges with fire/ fuels management?
As many landowners and homeowners know, fuels management work can be extremely expensive. There are approximately 100 houses/structures that border our properties and 6 miles of road that require constant and consistent fuels management. Each year, PLT conducts assessments of the high-risk areas of our preserves and strives to manage fuels as best we can with limited resources.
We achieve our fuels reduction work through amazing staff, volunteers, and local contractors. Our funding sources for large fuels reduction projects are supported by grants through Placer County and the State, such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire (CAL FIRE).
Who do I contact if I have more questions or concerns about fuels management?
Contact Anna Urias, Conservation Specialist, at (530) 887-9222 or by email.
