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Reducing fuels on steep slopes

Image shows a helicopter hovering over a logging pile.
Tahoe National Forest’s North Yuba watershed is a highly productive water source for downstream residents and the agricultural industry across northern California. Although it is the largest continuous unburned landscape in the Central Sierras, it is also one of the most difficult forests to keep safe…
#NorthYubaForestPartnership, #Helicopter, #NationalForestFoundation, #HazardousFuels, #Wildfire, #Fire, #TahoeNationalForest

The fire that never starts

A photo close to the ground of green grass growing along the side of a paved road, with a Forest Service wildland fire truck on the road in the background.
When 95% of wildfires are started by humans — especially in a part of the country like Southern California with 25 million people — stopping wildfires before they start is a lofty goal.But for Nicole Molinari, an ecologist for the Forest Service, a recent mapping effort contains a compelling insight — nearly two thirds of human-caused fires occur along roadsides in the area…
#Fire, #FirePrevention, #WildfirePrevention, #Grasslands, #NativePlants, #Wildfire, #WildfireRiskReduction

Post-wildfire restoration in the 2018 Camp Fire area on the Plumas National Forest

A pile of ashes is left after a prescribed burn.
Editor’s note: Across the West, land managers are working together to accomplish what they cannot do alone — to restore massive areas affected by past wildfire while also strategically planning how to best suppress the next.Forest Service firefighter James Lico, and Julia Sidman, a forestry program manager for the Butte County Resource Conservation District talk about the work that's needed to…
#Campfire, #PrescribedFire, #ControlledBurn, #PileBurning, #Wildfire, #WildfireRiskReduction, #WildfireCrisis, #Fire, #PlumasNationalForest

Community roots, lasting impact

A person sitting on a fallen tree in a forest behind purple wildflowers, with a clipboard recording data.
The Salmon-Challis National Forest is no stranger to wildfire. Its rugged terrain spans 4.3 million acres across Central Idaho with much of the land affected by fires over the past few decades.The need to accelerate reforestation has only grown. The small yet dedicated forest silviculture crew took on the main responsibility for that work. But that changed three years ago when the Salmon-Challis…
#SalmonChallisNationalForest, #Wildfire, #Idaho, #Silviculture, #SharedStewardship, #PostFireRecovery, #Timber, #Reforestation, #WildfireRecovery, #ForestRestoration, #Partnerships, #ForestHealth, #NaturalResourceManagement

Keeping the lights on and the fires out in rural Montana

Image shows a man and a woman in hard hats and safety gear looking on as electrical utility work is done in a forest.
Wildfires are everyone’s concern—they threaten not just the forests in which they burn, but the lives, property and livelihoods of nearby communities. Many communities that live in the shadow of wildfire risk understand this danger and have banded together to address it. One such organization is FireSafe Flathead, which consists of local, county and state representatives, along with officials…
#CommunityWildfireDefenseGrants, #WildfireRiskReduction, #Wildfire, #Fire, #FuelReduction

Building community to mitigate wildfires

Image shows a collage of four photographs. The left-most shows two people walking towards a car with a hill in the background, the second from the left shows a woman marking on a map on a wall, the third from the left shows a man showing a group of people something in the undergrowth of a forest, and the fourth from the left shows a group of people standing around a table.
What do you do when you can't entirely stop something bad from happening? You mitigate the damage it might cause. Natural disasters, like hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires, can never be completely stopped. In fact, wildfire is an important part of many healthy ecosystems. That doesn’t mean it won't pose an existential threat to people's lives and property, so dealing with the threat it poses…
#Community, #Wildfire, #WildfirePrevention, #Firefighters, #WildlandFirefighters