FOREST RANCH — The latest generation of environmental scientists wants to use fire for good.
Before dawn on Tuesday, a group of Chico State students slipped on fire-resistant clothing and grabbed drip torches at Big Chico Creek Ecological Preserve. They were giddy: It was going to be their first time participating in a prescribed fire. The goal was to burn around 25 acres on a slope near the reserve’s entrance. Jared Geiser, who’s studying geography and environmental science at Chico State, had waited all year, through classes and a special certification, for this day.
“It’s exciting to be a part of the process after studying it,” he said. “Fire has all these ecological benefits. That’s why I’m here.”
The preserve, owned by Chico State, has been using prescribed burns for over a decade. The goal is to clear unwanted vegetation to reduce fire danger and encourage native plants, which thrive with the low-severity fire. Eli Goodsell, the director of Chico State’s reserves, wants to train inexperienced but interested locals so that more people are qualified to bring fire back to the landscape in a healthy way. Though Indigenous people have long used fire as a tool to manage forests, federal and state policy is only just coming around to the idea. Goodsell and his colleagues are among those leading the movement, especially on private property, which make up at least half of California’s fire-prone land.
This particular burn had been in the works for four years. It’s part of a 254-acre project funded by more than $300,000 from California’s cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Volunteers and staff had already cut down branches and seedlings from the area and cleared a trail from which participants could manage the fire. They put together a detailed plan for the burn, which is a legal document with Cal Fire. Once they saw favorable weather, after the heat and wind of October but before the first big storm of winter, they scheduled the burn.
At 7 a.m., the group signed their liability waivers and received a morning briefing from burn boss Stephen Graydon, the executive director of Terra Fuego, a partner on the project. Then they trudged to the site, where Cal Fire personnel had pulled up their big trucks. At 8 a.m., a few of them cleared leaf litter away from a small patch for a test fire. They just had to check the winds and humidity, and then they could start.
Then Graydon announced that the moisture content of the vegetation on the ground appeared to be below the agreed-upon limit in the prescription. Monday’s winds had sucked the sticks dry. But humidity was rising again as a storm approached, Graydon said, so he ordered the group to wait.
Zeke Lunder, the founder of Deer Creek Resources, which provides wildfire analysis and mapping, and his crew sprung into action.
“It’s our job to provide science in real-time,” he explained. That means monitoring hyper-local weather and checking that the prescribed burn met its objectives. For more information about local conditions, he called an Oregon meteorologist who had access to a Cohasset weather station.
The students were getting antsy. They practiced 3-D mapping on their phones and went over the burn plan again. Geiser played with a pocket lighter. His former Chico State professor, Don Hankins, an expert in fire ecology and cultural fire, clapped his hands to keep warm in the near-freezing temperatures. Longtime firefighters told stories of battling massive fires. They told the younger participants how more frequent and low-severity fires — like the ones intentionally set and managed by Cal Fire, tribes or other land stewards — helped keep the risk of those big fires down.
A few hours later, word came back from Lunder’s team: conditions were right. Graydon separated the group into a team who would set the fire with drip torches, and a team who would guide the low-burning flames with shovels and brooms.
They all gathered around the testing patch. A Cal Fire employee lit the leaves on fire. The group warmed their hands on the small flames as smoke rose in the air. Graydon said the spread of the fire through the leaves looked good.
It was 11:30. All that was left was the final OK from Cal Fire.
The answer was no. Local conditions seemed good for a burn, but the Cal Fire regional director had decided that adjacent weather put the whole project at risk.
“I’m sorry, everybody,” said Graydon. At the same time, snow flurries began. Goodsell said he was disappointed, but that the group would try again some other time.
The lesson, at the end of the day, had changed. It had become one about using science in decisions, the regulatory limits on burns — and patience.