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Vegetation Management Program |
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The
Vegetation Management Program (VMP) is a cost-share program
that focuses on the use of prescribed fire to reduce wildland
fuel hazards while providing other benefits such as urban
interface protection, wildlife enhancement and firefighter
safety. The
program utilizes the Unit's fire suppression engine crews,
helicopter, bulldozers and Conservation Camp fire crews
to accomplish the program's goals.
The Unit has been an active participant in the
program since 1983 and now averages approximately 3,000
acres a year in treatment.
The largest project has been the conversion of
the 1977 Scarface Fire in Modoc County from 20 year old
brush and fire debris to thrifty pine plantations.
To date the Unit has treated 17,000 acres of the
original 40,000 acres of private land burned by the wildfire.
A second major project begun in early 1999 is a Community
Defense Zone around the communities of Lake Almanor, Plumas
County. This
is a 660 foot wide by 37 mile long strip of treated timber
where all of the dead material, including tree limbs are
removed, and the remaining live trees are spaced so that
a wildfire approaching a community will
"drop" from the tree crowns to the ground
allowing suppression units to be more effective in stopping
the wildfire. To
date approximately three miles have been completed in
the Chester area and another five miles is in progress
near the communities of Canyon Dam, Almanor, and Prattville.
This is a hand labor project using Antelope Conservation
Camp crews that
prune, gather and pile during the summer and the piles
are burned during the winter.
A similar project is in progress adjacent to the
tiny Modoc community of Tionesta using an Intermountain
Conservation Camp crew.
Similar projects are planned for Janesville, Westwood,
Big Valley Ranchettes, Cal Pines and Tom's Creek Estates.
These future projects are being designed through
our Fire Safe Program efforts of the Unit's Fire
Prevention Bureau and the local Fire Safe
Councils.
A new VMP Program Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will
allow for the VMP program to be expanded into the eastside
pine type and juniper/sagebrush type as long as exotic
weeds such as Medusahead or cheatgrass are not present
in significant numbers.
This enhanced program
will allow the re-entry of cool fire prescriptions
to those timber stands that have been thinned under a
biomass removal harvest and, thus preventing a catastrophic
wildfire such as the Scarface of 1977 or the Eagle Fire
of 1994. Fire
can be reintroduced into the sagebrush type to prevent
the expansion of juniper and to enhance native grasslands.
Along with new opportunities, smoke management
has become a major issue and the Unit is actively supporting
the work of a local agency cooperative named The Northeast
Air Alliance which will soon have its own web page where
the public can query for future planned prescribed fire
events or recent burn results in their particular area.
 
Tionesta
Fuel Break
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