California has suffered increasingly devastating fires in the past decade. Mark Lacey, president, California Cattlemen’s Association, says ranchers are very frustrated with CAL Fire—California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection—the agency responsible for fire protection on state-owned lands and administration of California’s private and public forest lands.
“I appointed a working group of producers and university folks to discuss land management issues, grazing for fuel reduction, burning, thinning, post-fire treatments, etc. Everyone at county meetings has ideas about what’s wrong with current programs, and potential solutions. We’ve had good input from producers, but primarily I’m hearing their frustrations with CAL Fire and the government blaming all fires on climate change,” he says.
“No matter what the cause, we have to deal with it, and CAL Fire is not doing that. They don’t want to do controlled burns (to reduce fuel loads); they don’t want negative comments from the public about smoke. They also throw a lot of money in directions that are not productive for fire control.”
To reduce fuel loads would involve changing existing state and federal laws and regulations.
“They don’t want to do that, or they won’t, or they get pushbacks from other agencies and environmental groups. Instead of rolling back regulations and changing laws, they want to throw money at the problem,” says Lacey.
State legislation last year instructed CAL Fire to identify 10 crews whose primary job would be fuel reduction burns.
“That would help, but we’re 30 years behind,” Lacey continued. He added that some projects wouldn’t have to be burning; it could be selective grazing in areas where there’s been no grazing or doing brush control with goats.
“The California Resources Board and regional air boards are part of the problem. Their ‘clear air’ standards are hard to live by. The air board might limit us to 10 acres per day, and if it takes 10 days to do 100 acres, people complain about prolonged smoke. Sometimes it would be better to burn it all in one day, subjecting the public to less days of smoke.”
The alternative, if fuels are not reduced by grazing, thinning, or burning, is a huge fire and thick smoke all summer—a bigger health hazard from air pollution.
Every region in California has different air board standards meaning some ranchers have a harder time working with the air boards to get burning done.
“Sometimes the air board’s standards/criteria to approve a day to burn is a lot different from what CAL Fire looks at. CAL Fire is so afraid to burn that if there’s any wind at all they call off a burn or shut you down,” says Lacey.
“Both agencies overreact to public comments about air quality. If they only listen to environmental groups and won’t let people use dozers and do some burning, there will continue to be more fires,” he says.
In earlier years ranchers were proactive.
“We didn’t have CAL Fire and didn’t need them. Everyone grew up burning and knew how to do it. We’d do it in the cool season and prevent major fires during summer. We created fuel breaks, and back in those days the California Department of Forestry (before they changed their name to CAL Fire) had large fuel breaks to help them effectively control or prevent large fires and get ahead of them. They could backfire off those fuel breaks.”
Lacey says there are some good people working for CAL Fire but the historical knowledge is no longer there.
“I don’t think very many of them know that the only reason that department was created was for fuel reduction and fire protection.”
There are many challenges and problems to try to resolve. “Some of it needs to be regulatory changes and some need to be legislative fixes. People need the courage to resist the environmental attitude of not wanting anything done, and not overreact to public comment about smoke. I keep asking them, ‘Would you rather apologize for a couple days of smoke, or have to apologize to someone whose house burned down (or who lost a family member fighting fire),’” says Lacey.
Costly non-solutions
“The governor allocated more than $200 million toward the fire problem and CAL Fire used it to buy about 20 very large helicopters,” said Lacey.
“This won’t solve wildfires; helicopters have marginal value for controlling a big fire. These large helicopters need a two-person crew, possibly three, such as a pilot, co-pilot, and crew chief. This is two or three people in each helicopter, who will be state employees, on duty half the year, receiving salaries for the entire year, and then a legacy (retirement) for however long—and they can probably retire at age 55.”
This equipment will continue to have operation and maintenance expenses, plus the cost to crew them, and costs of California pensions—an ongoing expense for state taxpayers.
“The reason they got helicopters in earlier years was so they could use a heli-torch to set backfires to do controlled burns. Now they buy helicopters just to move people around or monitor a fire, without doing anything to retard fires.
“Helicopters can’t carry enough water to do much good. If they were going to spend money on equipment they’d have been better off spending it on extra-large bombers that lay down a lot of retardant. The small amount of water a helicopter can dump might be adequate for one tree, or to help out a crew that’s endangered, but inadequate for fighting a big fire,” he says.
Constructive alternatives
The California Cattlemen’s Association is setting up meetings with state parks and state agencies. “If they don’t have infrastructure to facilitate grazing, perhaps the money from the government could be used for infrastructure to allow for grazing,” says Lacey. Livestock can reduce fires and enhance public safety.
Brush removal, whether by fire, spraying, or mechanical means, is temporary.
“In a short time, we get regrowth of chaparral, other shrubs and heavy fuels. Brush is unpalatable for cattle, but goats and sheep might be able to keep new growth down,” Lacey explains.
“A combined strategy can work in some state parks and municipalities and possibly delay return of those shrubs,” says Lacey. He also pointed out that then, if a fire goes though, it will be a quick burn, not as damaging, nor as likely to expand and become a catastrophic fire.
“I live on the east side of the Sierras and we do a lot of range burning to retard desert shrubs. We need to burn some areas every five to seven years, to reduce excessive fuel buildup. If you can keep fire intervals short, it delays encroachment by shrubs,” Lacey added.
The Park Service has a “let burn” policy and it’s not flexible enough.
“We get thundershowers in July and August; many lightning-caused fires start one or two trees on fire. The agency could easily put it out with a small crew, but they don’t, and then it becomes a huge fire and they spend millions trying to suppress it. The Park Service needs to change their fire program.
“If small fires start in the heat of summer, when there will be another 90 days or more of warm weather, upslope winds, etc. they need to put it out, and identify areas that should be burned for fire control. Then they could go back in there in October after weather cools down, light them off and let them burn until snowfall,” he explains. — Heather Smith Thomas, WLJ correspondent
