Chaparral covers most of our four Southern California national forests, creating important habitat and watershed. But what is chaparral? And why does it burn so frequently here? What can communities do to prevent damage and risk from wildfire?
Click on the PDF below to view the fact sheet.
Click here to listen to the 8-22-11 radio story.
Click here to listen to the 7-19-11 presentation.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 allows agencies to take any measure to control a fire. This includes creating fire roads, fire breaks, backfires or aerial suppression. Managing Wildfires in Wilderness is a useful hand-out that helps explain how the agencies that manage our wilderness areas address wildfires.
Northern California is again entering a long wildfire season with high heat and drought conditions expected well into fall. But a Wilderness Society teleconference featured experts that discussed how some communities and firefighting policies are changing the way wildfires are fought — still keeping communities safe as a top priority while also preserving forests.
Listen to the teleconference.
Listen in on a panel discussion hosted by The Wilderness Society on the pine beetle problem and how the federal government and local communities can work together to protect people, property and natural resources.
Timber harvest following wildfire leads to different outcomes depending on the biophysical setting of the forest, pattern of burn severity, operational aspects of tree removal, and other management activities. Removal of snags reduces long-term fuel loads but generally results in increased amounts of fire fuels for the first few years after logging unless surface fuels are effectively treated.
Land management agencies are under political pressure both to reduce fire costs and to mitigate fire risk. One new tool, the development of Fire Management Plans (FMP), is considered so central to both of these objectives that is now required by law for each administrative unit.
