Demand for controlled burns has surged as California grasps the potential of fire to fight future fire. Practitioners say funding has yet to catch up, but state grants are helping to fill in the gaps.
In an affirmation of the Marin conservation nonprofit’s prescribed burning practices, Audubon Canyon Ranch secured a $2 million grant from Cal Fire last month. The bulk of the funding will go over the next four years to Fire Forward, the organization’s training program for controlled burns that rejuvenate forests and make them less vulnerable to wildfire. The state agency’s business and workforce development grant will fund intensive prescribed burn training for five new Fire Forward employees per year, preparing them for “burn boss” certification under California law and making them eligible for leadership positions on the program’s crews.
The money will help A.C.R. catch up to a new interest in controlled burns and augment their volunteer crews with paid leaders. “We’re basically trying to create a very small model of a paid workforce to do this work,” said Sasha Berleman, the director of Fire Forward. “Everyone’s saying we need more prescribed fire, but so far to date, there’s been a drop in the bucket of funding going toward paying people to do this work.”
Fire Forward, started in 2017, provides a service that forestry experts and fire officials say is urgently needed to prevent catastrophic blazes. Prescribed burns were a traditional practice of California’s Indigenous people, but the fire suppression practiced by colonial settlers in the last century and a half has led to coastal forests choked with ladder fuels—the vegetation that lets fire climb from the forest floor to the canopy.
No controlled burns are slated for West Marin until the winter, when Fire Forward plans to initiate projects on A.C.R.’s Martin Griffin Preserve north of Stinson Beach and at Toms Point, just south of Lawson’s Landing. But the details for these projects aren’t final, and “new projects pop up all the time,” Ms. Berleman said.
Though fire officials laud the increased use of controlled burns, fire is an inherently unpredictable tool. In February, the Marin County Fire Department said it would tighten requirements on the program’s prescribed burns after a planned fire reignited unexpectedly among redwoods in Stinson Beach, forcing an emergency response.
Of the grant, $1.6 million will go directly to the new workforce, and the remainder will cover an environmental review of Fire Forward’s vegetation management practices. The California Environmental Quality Act review will allow the program to access additional public funding and collaborate on burns with public agencies like the Marin County Fire Department.