California’s native forests and woodlands are being altered by high severity fire at an alarmingly rapid rate and scale. This paper focuses on California’s unique situation in terms of values at risk and the critical role of professional forest management in creating fire resilient forests in a warming climate. This Position Statement was adopted by the California Society of American Foresters in January 2023 and replaces the 2019 California SAF policy statement entitled California’s Wildfire Emergency.
This “solution” is no solution . It is a politically correct essay that does not address the real source of large wildfires: bureaucracy and a departure from lessons learned.
There is no such thing as “fire resilient forests”.
The SAF statement is well written but offers no specific improvements to reducing the size of fires.
Changes in forest management undertaken in the 1980s has led to the incompetence of the 2020s. Too many chiefs without in-depth wildfire suppression field experience. Watching a wildfire from the road is not useful experience. Cal Fire strike teams are useless when it comes to fire suppression. Cal Fire is all show and no go during wildfires. Strike teams are only impressive traveling to and from fires and when parking in a hotel parking lot. Wildland fire suppression is the key to striving toward forest management objectives of wood, water, wildlife and wecreation.
Cal Fire is good at suppression of vehicle and structure fires.