OUTCOME: Fire Resilient Forests

Problem

The region lacks the capacity to conduct beneficial fire at the pace, scope, and scale needed to improve and maintain forest health and fire resilience.

Solution

Beneficial Fire Capacity - Support increased capacity to conduct beneficial fire by increasing the opportunities for funding, training, and certification for practitioners.

Background and Context

Across the region, a larger workforce dedicated to beneficial fire is needed at all levels – Tribal, federal, state, and local – and in both the public and private sectors. This includes planners, fire managers, regulators, air quality experts, communications teams, prescribed fire burners, cultural burners, burn crews, and more. While the opportunity to conduct prescribed burns and utilize managed fire following natural ignitions may be limited by various regulatory and logistical issues, and by competing demands for wildfire response resources, this work is not seasonal. Planning, permitting, preparing, and implementing beneficial fire work includes activities that need to happen year-round. Planning and funding must focus on expanding the pace, scope, and scale of these important activities to reduce hazardous fuels and increase ecosystem resilience to damaging wildfires and climate change.

According to interviews by Marks-Block and Tripp (2021) with 75 fire managers across northern California, losing qualified burners to wildfire response – including standby for anticipated fires – was the leading constraint to conducting prescribed burns. The other top barriers were risk aversion in agency leadership to approving burns, and a lack of personnel to plan, prepare, and implement prescribed burns. At the state level, there have been significant efforts to build beneficial fire capacity in recent years: CAL FIRE has $35 million per year to maintain and expand its recently added fuel crews and has added Prescribed Fire Crews that were intended to focus on facilitating prescribed fire, though the impact of this program needs to be evaluated. California State Parks is also hiring and training more prescribed burn staff. The USFS is using the Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC) to share prescribed burn resources throughout their system. As of mid-2022, there are ~20 community-based prescribed fire groups and PBAs established across the state, with more groups forming rapidly.

“This is an all hands on deck moment. Residents need to fire-safe their homesteads and reach out for help if they need it. Fire managers need to do all that they can to support prescribed and cultural fire as well as community and tribal engagement in wildfire management. Collaborative landscape-scale fuels projects like the Somes Bar Integrated Fire Management Project need to be emulated around all our most at risk neighborhoods. And we need to learn together by burning together again, through programs like TREX, All Hands All Lands, and Prescribed Burn Associations.”

– Will Harling, quoted in River on Fire: Impacts and Adaptations in a Fire Prone Landscape. Salmon River Restoration Council Winter 2021-22 Newsletter,  p. 3-4

Recommendations

SB 1260 (2018) mandated a California State Certified Burn Boss (CARX) certification program. In 2021 the State Fire Marshal released the CARX curriculum and the first week-long certification was held in Eureka in the spring of 2021, led by UCCE. This certification requires rigorous prerequisites which limits the number of individuals who can participate, and there have been delays in graduates receiving their state certifications. Along with timely state certification of CARX graduates, CARX trainings should be expanded and supplemented with coursework and live-fire training opportunities that assist burners in developing the prerequisites required for CARX certification.

AB 642 (2021) mandates development of a proposal for a Prescribed Fire Training Center in California. To expand the impact of a central training center, California’s Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire, Key Action 1.1 encourages the use of regional satellite sites for live fire training. The North Coast, with its rich community of fire practitioners and leaders, offers many potential training center locations. For example, the mid-Klamath offers an ideal site for training on cultural and community-based burning, working in conjunction with local Tribes, the Indigenous Peoples’ Burning Network, the Cultural Fire Management Council, the Mid Klamath Watershed Council, and other local partners.  A second regional site in southern Mendocino or northern Sonoma County that would support training focused on these regional landscapes and vegetation patterns could be developed by a consortium of regional Tribes and/or could build off the experience and efforts of Fire Forward and the Good Fire Alliance. Many other opportunities for training sites or logistical hubs exist throughout the North Coast region, including locations with the Humboldt PBA and Trinity Integrated Fire Management Partnership. Tribes can be valuable leaders and partners in developing these regional centers, partnering in land acquisition, design engineering, and construction and potential funding through federal Tribal programs. Tribes have been discussing the required features of such centers for many years. These features include incorporation of community resilience facilities and training centers that offer courses that are Tribally led, driven by local Indigenous knowledge and practices that incorporates TEK, contain workforce housing similar to a Type 3 fire camp, and offer tool and equipment resource sharing. Smaller field-based satellite facilities would reduce travel time and make resources more accessible to remote, rural communities. Local training centers and programs would be tailored to reflect local ecosystems and would be a place for Tribes to train local workforces on regional ecological stewardship.

At the community scale, PBAs are now being launched throughout the state as a way for landowners, community members, NGO partners, local fire services, and others to use prescribed fire in their communities. The Nature Conservancy’s Fire Learning Network has been leading Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges, or TREX, since 2008. This internationally recognized training model has resulted in thousands of people from all backgrounds being trained in prescribed fire use. The Watershed Center has worked with TREX, CAL FIRE, and USFS Region 5 leadership to develop California TREX (Cal-TREX). Cal-TREX events focus on increasing the local capacity of agency and community fire practitioners and PBAs throughout the state. Many TREX trainings have happened throughout the North Coast since the first TREX in 2012, with the Klamath TREX providing annual fire trainings for the past eight years and training over 600 participants in prescribed and cultural fire. PBAs, TREX, and Cal-TREX trainings should be expanded throughout the North Coast region, providing an accessible and flexible complement to the development of brick-and-mortar training centers.

Actions

Support training and retention of a dedicated prescribed fire workforce for Tribal, local, state, and federal agency partners, including funding and training for more planners, fire managers, regulators, air quality experts, communication teams, prescribed fire practitioners and crews, etc.

Support development of collaborative agreements among fire agencies and PBAs/CBOs, Tribes, etc. to increase regional capacity.

  • If additional PBAs are needed, provide seed funding.
  • Provide long-term funding to PBA leaders.
  • Provide direct support to Tribal non-profits working to implement Tribal cultural burns, Tribal science, and TEK in coordination with regional Tribes.
  • Provide funding to cultural and prescribed fire practitioners to purchase tools and equipment necessary to carry out fire operations and build community caches and burn trailers of supplies (e.g. pumps, tanks, hand tools, radios, etc.) throughout the region. Include PPE caches with other equipment. Develop best practice guidelines for Burn Trailers and supply caches.
  • Support training and capacity building by organizations and consortiums such as Fire Forward, Watershed Research and Training Center, Mid Klamath Watershed Council, and others that use the All Hands, All Lands approach.
  • Support staff, programs, and collaborations of organizations such as UCCE and RCDs to help build PBA and other community-based prescribed fire capacity.

  • Establish sustained, multi-year financial support for regional training and technical assistance programs for fire fighters, conservation, Tribal, CBO, and other burners.
  • Develop a list of current burners that have the interest and drive to be community leaders/educators.
  • Support train-the-trainer workshops for identified burners to expand beneficial fire training amongst a broad range of regional partners and Tribes.
  • Support PBA trainings and burns to build skills and confidence for all levels of burners.
  • Work with Tribes to incorporate socio-ecological objectives into prescribed fire trainings to enhance ecosystem functions and processes towards increased climate resilience.
  • Support Tribal integration of cultural sensitivity/principles training into prescribed fire training programs.
  • Build from examples of effective cooperative trainings, including Cal-TREX, Cultural Fire Management Council/Yurok Cultural Burn TREX, Klamath River TREX, Women-in-Fire (WTREX), PBAs, etc.

  • Encourage and support participation in the new state Burn Boss (CARX) certification program.
  • Host regional trainings regularly throughout the region that increase CARX burn boss capacity, e.g. CARX pre-requisites, to create a pool of qualified burn-boss trainees to eventually become CARX certified.
  • Explore more incentives and benefits for CARX certified burn bosses, in addition to the CAL FIRE cooperative agreement to share liability and other changes via SB 332 and the Prescribed Fire Claims Fund.
  • Provide financial support (including attendance stipends) for CARX trainees who don’t have institutional support to cover costs of travel, lodging, etc., especially Cultural Fire Practitioners.
  • Continue funding for UCCE’s “California’s New Certified Burn Boss Certification Travel Grant” to empower more course offerings and travel scholarships for students.
  • Support the recognition that certified Burn Bosses from the local sector, including Tribes, are fully qualified to prepare and implement Prescribed Burn Plans.

  • Participate in strategic planning with the statewide Prescribed Fire Training Center Working Group regarding locations, philosophy, and program implementation for the Prescribed Fire Training Center proposed in AB 642 and California’s Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire.
  • Support northern Tribes to facilitate collaborative, regional conversations to develop a cultural and prescribed fire training center in the north part of the region, recognizing its rich cultural fire experience.
  • Support Mendocino and Sonoma County Tribes to establish a Tribally-led multi-use environmental and fire training center and logistical hub.
  • Work with UCCE, Watershed Center, and other partners to identify other potential training sites or logistical hubs in the North Coast region.
  • Work with Fire Forward and the Good Fire Alliance to expand their beneficial fire training efforts.
  • Explore opportunities to recognize and incorporate into trainings traditional knowledge of local Tribes on the use and benefits of cultural fire.

Support Indigenous field institute programs to ensure adequate capacity to build upon TEK focal species information and formulation relevant to planning for prescribed fire with cultural objectives.

Develop regional and/or county-scale Fire School programs that integrate career development non-profits, governmental wildfire fuel reduction agencies (i.e., CAL FIRE and local fire departments), and local high schools and community colleges that serve the region. This model would provide the greatest benefit for disadvantaged youth while creating the professionals needed to adapt to the changing climate and the increasing threat of wildfire – see Fire School Pilot Program at Lake Sonoma & Dry Creek – Circuit Rider Community Services 

  • Develop standardized templates for transmitting pre-fire planning products to incident command teams. Develop procedures for mapping local resource objectives and emergency contingencies.

  • Prioritize public outreach around beneficial fire, and the difference between particulate and other emissions from beneficial versus uncharacteristic large damaging wildfire.
« Solution:
Solution: »