CHAPARRAL: Protect what’s left

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – The California Chaparral Institute has just filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court challenging a failure by the County of San Diego to follow state law, include public participation, and provide proper scientific oversight in planning a 3-4 year, $7 million project to remove trees and shrubs in natural areas.

On May 13, 2009, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved the Vegetation Clearing Project and exempted the Project from environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. The Clearing Project would remove habitat in rural backcountry areas with a specific focus on trees up to 500 feet away from structures and roads.

The Clearing Project followed on the heels of a controversial overarching county report describing management of forest and shrublands that was strongly criticized by scientists and conservationists. At the time the report was adopted, the supervisors promised that an “appropriate environmental review” would be conducted “for any new proposed projects which would implement actions identified in the vegetation management report.” The Clearing Project was identified in that report but was exempted from environmental review when approved on May 13, 2009.

“Instead of focusing on developing a comprehensive fire management plan, the County of San Diego is engaged in a misguided campaign against nature”, said Richard Halsey, Director of the California Chaparral Institute. “We strongly support government assistance for reasonable vegetation management around homes. But the County’s focus on clearing trees deemed unhealthy nearly two football field lengths away from structures and roads is a waste of taxpayer money. It is not only harmful to nature but can also greatly increase the threat of wildfire to people when highly flammable weeds invade native habitat due to clearance operations. The project may also lead to the spread of the gold-spotted oak beetle that is killing thousands of oak trees in the region.”

“State law requires a thorough analysis of the potential benefits and harm from any government project to prevent unintended, negative consequences”, said attorney Rory Wicks. “Yet here the County Board of Supervisors has ignored repeated requests for a collaborative and comprehensive fire management plan and turned a blind eye to potential harm to communities and nature from the Clearing Project. This lawsuit is a last resort to prevent the County’s short-sighted quest for federal dollars from compromising public safety and natural resources.”

The project deflects attention away from what needs to be done - assisting residents to retrofit their homes and reducing hazardous fuels directly next to communities. This issue was highlighted in a new study released June 6, 2009 that federal programs intended to reduce wildfire risks in the West have been largely ineffective because fuel-reduction efforts seldom hit areas near homes and businesses (Schoennagel et al. 2009).

Over the past five years, the California Chaparral Institute, the San Diego Regional Fire Safety Forum, and others have worked to help San Diego County develop a sufficient fire protection system to protect lives, property, and natural resources from wildfire. While the County has improved its fire-safe building and planning codes for new construction, it has consistently failed to provide adequate funding to create an organized fire protection system.

San Diego County spends less on fire protection than any other county in Southern California, yet it remains one of the most fire prone regions in the United States. To partially make up for this lack of funding the County has depended on federal grants to conduct habitat-clearing projects to attempt to reduce fire risk in the backcountry on a short-term basis.

The California Chaparral Institute seeks to compel the County to prepare a long-term, comprehensive fire management plan that will include a collaborative process that includes all stakeholders including fire agencies, scientists, conservation organizations, land managers, community groups, and private land owners.

For more details on the lawsuit please visit the California Chaparral Institute Website: http://www.californiachaparral.org

The California Chaparral Institute is a non-profit science and education organization dedicated to promoting an understanding and respect for the chaparral ecosystem and helping communities reconnect with the natural environment.

In response to the ecological succession occurring in the Cuyamaca Mountains after the 2003 Cedar fire, the current draft of San Diego County’s Vegetation Management Report states,

“Re-establishment of forests will require specific treatments for removal of the invading Chaparral shrubs and modifying the understory of the replanted and seedling conifers as they grow.”

In the event there remains a question as to the systemic problems that exist in San Diego County’s Department of Planning and Land Use’s approach to ecology, this quote will likely help remove such doubt. It demonstrates the problems created by the myopic focus on trees and the perspective that chaparral is only fuel, not an important part of a dynamic native ecosystem.

Ceanothus plays a critical role in the restoration of soil fertility through nitrogen fixation after a fire. Removing it will not only destroy habitat, but will seriously compromise the ability of the Cuyamacas to recover.

Add your voice to those of us who feel science is important and attend the January 9th San Diego County Planning Commission hearing where the county’s vegetation management plans will be discussed (at 9AM, 5201 Ruffin Road, San Diego, CA 92123, right off Highway 15 in Claremont Mesa).

On January 9, 2009 at 9AM there will be a San Diego County Planning Commission hearing on Supervisor Bill Horn’s directive asking county staff to develop a massive program to burn, masticate, or graze large portions of San Diego’s backcountry and protected county lands. We urge you to attend if you care about our region’s natural heritage. It is at risk.

The meeting will be held at the SD Planning Commission Hearing room at: 5201 Ruffin Road, San Diego, CA 92123, right off Highway 15 in Claremont Mesa. If you are nervous or unclear about what you can say at the hearing, don’t be. Read the materials provided here and become informed. Nothing will change unless you make a decision to participate.

Many of us have been attending multiple meetings and submitting letters and documents to the county to help them understand that fire must be dealt with in a comprehensive manner. The consensus reached during two recent county workshops with a broad range of participants was that:

1). The county must consider the entire fire risk equation because wildland vegetation management alone will not be effective.

2). The county will get more bang for the fire-risk-reduction-buck by focusing efforts NEAR housing developments, not out in the backcountry.

We do not know what kind of report the county’s planning department will deliver to the Planning Commission on January 9 based on these workshops, but considering their past history of favoring landscape-scale prescribed burns we are concerned.

From our perspective the county’s approach to fire is a misguided effort by the Board of Supervisors to avoid doing what fire officials across the state have been recommending for years. San Diego County needs to get serious about fire protection and fund its own regional fire department. The county has the money, yet they refuse to use it. Instead the Board of Supervisors continues to try the cheap way out. Large-scale vegetation treatments have been and will likely continue to be paid for by the federal government, not the county. But actually developing a comprehensive fire protection system in our region will take leadership and county funding. At the moment, both are unfortunately lacking.

If you would like to learn more about what San Diego County needs to do to better protect its citizens and natural resources from fire, please see the following:

Firefighting after Prop. A’s defeat.

The San Diego Regional Fire Safety Forum’s recommendations.

Discussion on fire protection in San Diego County on KPBS These Days.

What excessive burning can do to our region’s natural ecosystems.

The full story about why landscape-scale prescribed burning in order artificially create mixed-aged osaics is an unworkable approach.

There is a new page on the California Chaparral’s website that deals with the lack of fire preparedness that exists in San Diego County and how to best deal with it. To read more, please go the the San Diego County Fire page.

This home burned in the 2007 Witch fire in San Diego County. Notice the burned chaparral in the foreground, the iceplant zone in the middle, the dense stand of chaparral next, then the destroyed home in the background. The structure was ignited by embers, but could have been easily saved.

For those of you in San Diego County I felt it important to weigh in on a local proposition, Prop A, that will assess property owners a $52 parcel tax that the County says will be spent on fire protection services. Here are my thoughts on why I am voting NO on Prop. A.

1. San Diego County already has the money it needs to begin creating a regional fire department, but they refuse to spend it appropriately. The County receives about $250 million dollars a year from the half-cent sales tax levied by Prop 172 back in 1993. This money is required to be spent on public safety services (sheriff, police, fire, county district attorneys, corrections, and ocean lifeguards).

However, San Diego County gives the entire $250 million to the County Sheriff, district attorney, and probation. None to fire. The Board of Supervisors has made it perfectly clear they have no intention of changing this allocation. What is particularly interesting is that 50% of the total tax revenue collected under 172 is contributed by San Diego CITY residents, yet the city itself only gets about 5% back.

The County has a $4 billion budget. It has only allocated $8.5-15 million/yr. to support fire protection services. Los Angeles County spends more than $900 million. This is ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that San Diego County is one of the most fire-prone regions in the state and consistently has the highest loss of life and property due to wildfire (see statistics below). When the County decides to consider fire as a priority, then they can come to the voters to ask for additional funds.

2. Prop A is great politics, but lousy policy. It is designed to sound good to the voters, provide political cover for the Board of Supervisors (we are doing something), but it provides no details on how the money generated will be used. There are no defined outcomes. There are no defined deliverables. It does not create a regional fire department. All Prop A says is that a new agency will be formed to figure out ways to spend a new source of tax revenue. Fire equipment, training, communications, and “brush” clearing are listed as possibilities…but NOTHING about creating a needed regional fire department.

Prop A does not provide San Diego County residents with a comprehensive, collaborative plan to protect lives, property, and natural resources from wildfire. All it does is give money to a political board of advisors who will try to “improve” fire safety in the same failed, piecemeal way that has occurred in the past.

Prop A will not change the fact that we will continue to depend on outside resources paid for by non-San Diego residents to fight our fires. Although no official will say this publicly, but there will come a time when other fire agencies will refuse to send firefighting resources to our County during statewide firestorm events because their first obligation is to their own citizens – the people who paid for the services. It is common knowledge throughout California that San Diego is a “welfare county” when it comes to fire protection because the County Board of Supervisors has continually failed to show the leadership needed to create and adequately fund a regional fire department.

3. Finally, based on past experience, I do not trust the County Board of Supervisors or any political board to determine how to spend the money Prop. A will collect. Thus far the County has demonstrated a willingness to go for flash and flare (renting “Superscooper” water-dropping planes which will be worthless during wind-driven fire storms) rather than doing the essential work of developing a regional fire department that will provide additional “boots on the ground” and a coordinated approach to fire management.

In comparing San Diego County to other jurisdictions in lives/homes lost to wildfire and expenditures for fire protection, the numbers offer some sobering observations.

2003 Firestorm
Lives Lost San Diego County: 17
Homes Lost San Diego County: 2454

Lives Lost All Other Counties: 6
Homes Lost All Other Counties: 1198

2007 Firestorm
Lives Lost San Diego County: 10
Homes Lost San Diego County: 1383

Lives Lost All Other Counties: 0
Homes Lost All Other Counties: 792

Regional Comparison
Sq. miles served
San Diego County: 3348
Los Angeles County Fire: 2296

# of fire stations
San Diego County: 21 Cal Fire and 62 District (~volunteer)
Los Angeles County Fire: 170

Helicopters
San Diego County: 2 Sheriff, 2 SD city
Los Angeles County Fire: 9 LA County + 5 LA city

Budget
San Diego County: $8.5 million (Cal Fire)
Los Angeles County Fire: $902 million (07/08)

San Diego County could only obtain support for the proposition from less than 60% of the fire chiefs in the county. Numerous cities, including El Cajon, La Mesa, Encinitas, and Carlsbad, have voted to reject Prop. A. Professional firefighters in San Diego County are also on record as being opposed.

During a time of tightening budgets, I can not see how collecting additional money from taxpayers without a coherent plan on how to spend that money is reasonable. On the other hand, consolidating existing fire protection services into a regional fire department that is partially paid for by existing revenues and savings (fewer chiefs, fewer bureaucracies, and better coordination) is a much more workable approach.

It would be better to go back and develop a comprehensive plan, explain it to the voters, and strive to do the job right the first time rather than attempting to just collect money and ask the voters to trust that it will be spent well. We’ve been burned on that one before.

One last thing. I am hoping that the political leaders in this county do not end up pointing fingers at the voting public if this proposition fails (which I suspect it will). I believe the voters will make an intelligent decision on this by voting no because they see it for what it is, a lousy way to approach fire protection.

-RWH

Exploiting fear and stacking the decks with biased information are often used tools by the propagandist to shape public opinion. History is littered with examples. Today, all one has to do is tune into any number of AM talk radio shows to hear much of the same. So when it comes to wildfire, it should be no surprise that those who can use the public’s misunderstanding of fire to promote their own view of the world will do so.

With the support of the Forest Foundation, a non-profit group supported by the timber industry, a glossy new booklet is being distributed that purports to be a treatise on how to protect communities and save wildlands from wildfires. However, it doesn’t take long for the objective reader to realize that this document is designed to promote the economic interests of the wood products industry.

From the very beginning, Protecting Communities and Saving Forests by Thomas M. Bonnicksen lays blame for large wildfires on “unnaturally” dense forests and the endangerment of thousands of lives on fire agencies (through past fire suppression policies), the government (through conservation policies), and an ignorant public (we are disconnected from the land).

For a detailed review of this booklet, please see our Industry Advocate webpage.

Forest fire? Contrary to what the Forest Foundation's booklet appears to claim, the 2003 Old fire swept down weed covered foothills (foreground) and burned hundreds of homes along either side of Del Rosa Ave. (left center) in the suburbs of San Bernardino. This is NOT a forested landscape.

Myth #7: Chaparral shrubs suppress the germination of other plants

A common misconception about chaparral is that the ground below the canopy is bare because chaparral plants use “chemical warfare” or volatile substances to suppress the germination of plants that may compete with them.  This has led to the assumption that chaparral needs to burn to get rid of these chemicals in the soil (see Myths #1 and #4). Also known as allelopathy, actual chemical inhibition in nature has been notoriously difficult to prove. In the case of chaparral, seeds don’t germinate because they are innately dormant. In other words, the seeds will not germinate unless some external cue stimulates the process. The cue is typically heat or substances from smoke or charred wood that are released after a fire. Interestingly, the chemicals that were claimed to cause the inhibition of germination actually increase after a fire. For more details, please see our Chaparral Myths page.

A new State law addressing defensible space that deals with the entire fire environment, not just native vegetation, was signed by the Governor on September 27, 2008. The change was authored by Senator Christine Kehoe in SB 1595 and amends Public Resource Code 4291. The changes take effect January 1, 2009.

Along with a number of other folks in the conservation community, the California Chaparral Institute worked hard with Senator Kehoe to help craft the language necessary to eliminate the impression that the defensible space means stripping native habitat to the ground.

Some of the most important portions of the new law read:

1. “Wildfires pose a serious threat to the preservation of the public peace, health, or safety. The wildfire front is not the only source of risk since embers, or firebrands, travel far beyond the area impacted by the front and pose a risk of ignition to a structure or fuel on a site for a longer time.”

2. “The Legislature finds and declares that site and structure defensibility is essential to reduce the risk of structure ignition as well as for effective fire suppression by firefighters. This need to establish defensibility extends beyond the site fuel management practices required by this chapter, and includes, but is not limited to,  measures that increase the likelihood of a structure to withstand ignition, such as building design and construction requirements that use fire resistant building materials, and provide standards for reducing fire risks on structure projections, including, but not limited to, porches, decks, balconies and eaves, and structure openings, including, but not limited to, attic, foundation, and eave vents, doors, and windows”

3. “The amount of fuel modification necessary shall take into account the flammability of the structure as affected by building material, building standards, location, and type of vegetation. Fuels shall be maintained in a condition so that a wildfire burning under average weather conditions would be unlikely to ignite the structure. This paragraph does not apply to single specimens of trees or other vegetation that are well-pruned and maintained so as to effectively manage fuels and not form a means of rapidly transmitting fire from other nearby vegetation to a structure or from a structure to other nearby vegetation. The intensity of fuels management may vary within the 100-foot perimeter of the structure, the most intense being within the first 30 feet around the structure. Consistent with fuels management objectives, steps should be taken to minimize erosion.”

4. “The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shall develop, periodically update, and post on its Internet Web site a guidance document on fuels management pursuant to this chapter. Guidance shall include, but not be limited to, regionally appropriate vegetation management suggestions that preserve and restore native species, minimize erosion, minimize water consumption, and permit trees near homes for shade, aesthetics, and habitat; and suggestions to minimize or eliminate the risk of flammability of nonvegetative sources of combustion such as woodpiles, propane tanks, wood decks, and outdoor lawn furniture.”

5. “An insurance company that insures an occupied dwelling or occupied structure may require a greater distance than that required under paragraph (1) if a fire expert, designated by the director, provides findings that such a clearing is necessary to significantly reduce the risk of transmission of flame or heat sufficient to ignite the structure, and there is no other feasible mitigation measure possible to reduce the risk of ignition or spread of wildfire to the structure. The greater distance may not be beyond the property line unless allowed by state law, local ordinance, rule, or regulation.”

It might be helpful if local municipalities and county governments incorporated some of this language in their ordinances in order to codify the fact that fire will exploit the weakest link. Focusing on just one variable (native vegetation), as many ordinances do, is not an effective way to deal with fire risk.

Myth #6: Hot chaparral fires “sterilize” the soil

Can fire “sterilize” the soil and if it can, does it really matter? A hot fire can certainly kill biological life on the soil surface. But unless there are burning logs that maintain continuous amounts of heat over long periods of time, the amount of “soil sterilization” is relatively minor. Since trees and logs are not part of the chaparral ecosystem, chaparral fires are generally quite fast and the residence time for any heat on the surface is relatively short. In fact, hot fires actually serve an important purpose in shrubland ecosystems by destroying the seeds of invasive species. One sign of a healthy, chaparral ecosystem that is recovering from a fire are large areas of blackened ground (punctuated with resprouting shrubs and tiny shrub seedlings) remaining long after the first rainy season. Hot fires are a natural part of the chaparral. Contrary to popular opinion, we don’t need to rush in and cover the ground with mulch or seed. A healthy ecosystem will recover quite well without our help.

The hillside in the background was covered with an old-growth stand of mission manzanita at least 75 years old. It burned during the 2007 Witch fire. The area in the foreground was also burned, but notice the green invasive weeds already covering the ground. Normal chaparral fires are extremely hot, helping eliminate any non-native, invasives that may be present. Black ground months after a fall fire is a sign of a healthy chaparral plant community.