Increased rain, vegetation set scene for wildfire season
like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “Those factors all add up to the potential for a significant fire season this year and next,” Lando said, adding vegetation main- tenance in open space and along roadways and evacuation routes remains “absolutely critical this year, maybe more so than ever.” May marks the beginning of Wildfire Preparedness Week in California, and Len Nielson, Cal Fire staff chief for prescribed fire, said the live moisture content in the veg- etation should allow more opportunities to do controlled burns to reduce fuels. It would
help remove dead and dying vegetation without burning what’s green. Nielson said Cal Fire’s goal is to reduce fuel on more than 100,000 acres a year. The department has met its goal during the past two years. So far this year, it has completed about 31,000 acres, with about 17,000 acres of broadcast burning and about 14,000 acres of thinning, pruning, mastication and fuel-break work. Increased grant funding has played a “big part” in Cal Fire being able to achieve
By Ching Lee Generous rainfall may have erased drought conditions for most of the state, but it has not necessarily eased concerns for a potentially aggressive fire season. Saturated grounds and warming tem- peratures have spurred a bumper crop of vegetation across the landscape, partic- ularly fast-growing grasses and invasive weeds that fuel wildfires when they turn brown. The wet spring may delay the start of California’s fire season, ecology and fire experts say, but it’s a matter of time before carpets of green become highly combusti- ble if they are not managed. “There’s a lot more vegetation this year, so people are very, very nervous about that as it starts to dry up,” said Andree Soares, a Merced County sheep and goat rancher who provides targeted grazing services for vegetation management. Because the rainy season lasted longer this year, Soares said most of her animals were just deployed about two weeks ago. Bigger projects such as for the East Bay Municipal Utility District typically start in March but did not begin until last week. Depending on the project, her contract grazing work typically runs through September, sometimes into October. The challenge this year, she said, is get- ting through all the vegetation, which she described as wetter, greener, longer and denser. With increased growth, it may take longer to graze each location. She said she’s also seeing different types of vege- tation on the landscape—some long-dor- mant plants that are now coming to life. Todd Lando, wildfire hazard mitiga- tion specialist for the Central Marin Fire Department, said he expects the extra rain- fall and snowpack will promote addition- al vegetation growth, leading to probably “one of the biggest grass crops of the last decade in California.” With all the rain, he said he’s “really fear- ful that Californians are going to think that they somehow have a year off from wild- fires. That’s just not the case.” A firefighter, forester and ecologist, Lando added, “I like to remind people that the 2017 fire season, which was devastating, followed an excep- tionally wet winter in 2016.” With more than 1.5 million acres burned and nearly 11,000 structures destroyed or damaged, the 2017 fire season was the most destructive in California at the time, according to Cal Fire. It was surpassed by the 2018 wildfire season, which saw near- ly 2 million acres burned and more than 24,000 structures destroyed or damaged. Fueled by high winds and record-break- ing heat, the 2020 wildfire year remains the state’s largest on record, with more than 4.3 million acres burned and more than 11,000 structures destroyed or damaged. Lando said even though this fire sea- son may start a little later, California’s Mediterranean climate and dry summers make the state prone to wildfires. In the coastal region, grasses are still green and growing, but that will change. “When we get into September and October each
year, California is ready to burn,” he said. As grasses dry out later in the summer, they become easy to ignite, and they can ig- nite other bigger fuels in their path, Lando said. He noted the “huge number of dead trees” from years of drought. Storms this year brought down more trees, with “an accu- mulation of dead vegetation on the ground
See VEGETATION, Page 10
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May 3, 2023 Ag Alert 3
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