San Mateo Resource Conservation District, Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County, Los Gatos Creek Watershed Collaborative

Auten Resource Consulting supported the coordination and development of three successful CAL FIRE Forest Health Grants in 2019, 2020, and 2021 with a total awarded value to date of approximately 17 million dollars.

The predominant goal of these projects is to create more fire resilient forests by improving forest health and vigor through conducting forest density reduction treatments across approximately 1700 acres. These treatments focus on treating dead, dying, and diseased trees, live trees predominantly under 8 inches in diameter, and trimming understory vegetation.

ARC’s role in these partnerships was to coordinate landowners, scope and develop field verified treatment areas to ensure that they were operationally sound for forest health fuel reduction treatments. Included in this effort was evaluating 1700 acres of treatment areas for treatment access, sensitive resources, and assessing whether these proposed treatment areas could be successfully permitted through the California Environmental Quality Act.

Several of these projects are permitted and underway in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

San Mateo County Parks

The San Mateo Resources Conservation District was awarded a Forest Health Grant which entailed conducting forest health fuels reduction treatments on approximately 402 acres of forest and shrub lands in Huddart and Wunderlich County Parks of San Mateo. Altered fire regimes, drought, and a warmer climate are degrading forest conditions by reducing biodiversity and habitat suitability while also increasing competition for resources amongst trees and vegetation in an ecological system that is nearing capacity, ultimately increasing fuel loads that drive more catastrophic wildfires. Existing conditions within Huddart and Wunderlich County Parks prior to treatments included densely overstocked forest stands and suppressed understory trees and vegetation that act as a ladder fuels into overstory canopies. Understory vegetation treatments and the removal of small diameter trees promote the health and vigor of residual vegetation, restore habitat quality and suitability, and decrease the continuity of fuels within the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI).

Vegetation treatments include the removal of understory vegetation and trees ≤8 inches in diameter, retaining pockets of healthy vegetation and small diameter trees to promote habitat in the understory. The goal of this project is to reduce potential ignition sources and promote a more resilient fuel break in the WUI, improve forest health and vigor, and increase carbon storage capacity by promoting the increased growth of residual trees.

San Mateo Resource Conservation District

The San Mateo Resource Conservation District was awarded a Forest Health Grant which entailed conducting Forest Health Fuels Reduction vegetation treatments on the Girl Scouts of Northern California Camp Butano Creek Property. Like many other properties in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Camp Butano Creek is densely overstocked in many areas with tanoak and redwood trees exceeding 400 trees per acre, particularly in small (1–12-inch diameter) and some mid-range (12-24-inch diameter) trees. The stand had very little room to grow and was strained through competition for sunlight, nutrients, and water among so many trees. This creates less resilient forest stand conditions where diseases like sudden oak death can easily transfer between and kill trees, and weather-driven wildfire can at higher intensities - impacting larger, healthy trees.

Trees ≤8 inches in diameter were cut and chipped and the understory vegetation was also trimmed. The goal was to promote healthy growth of larger trees and allow sunlight to reach the forest floor to increase plant diversity, while also reducing ladder fuels and the associated fire hazard.

San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council

The San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council received a Fire Prevention Grant to conduct forest health fuels reduction vegetation treatments across more than 600 acres of the Covell Ranch which borders most of the east side of Cambria, California. Restricting fire over the last 100 years, a lack of vegetation management, climate change, periods of successive drought, and significant development into the Wildland-Urban Interface, the Monterey pine forest in Cambria has increased in density to a point where forested stands exhibit significantly unhealthy forest characteristics, setting the stage for an extensive spread of disease and significant increase in the potential for a major fire event.

This Monterey pine stand, with well over 500 trees per acre in some areas, had very little room to grow and was strained through competition for sunlight, nutrients, and water among so many trees. This creates weaker forest stand conditions where diseases like pitch canker, dwarf mistletoe, and western gall rust kill trees easier and allow weather-driven wildfire to burn very hot and impact larger, healthy trees.

Trees ≤8 inches in diameter were cut and chipped and the understory vegetation was also trimmed. The goal was to promote healthy growth of larger trees and allow sunlight to reach the forest floor to increase plant diversity, while also reducing ladder fuels and the associated fire hazard.

While Monterey pine forests may survive low- to moderate-intensity surface fires in a well-spaced, healthy stand, the conditions present at Covell Ranch have the potential to exacerbate fire severity by allowing fire to mobilize into the forest canopy by way of excessive continuities of vertical and horizontal dead and dry fuels throughout the property. Crown fires in Monterey pine forests typically kill mature pine trees and spread rapidly at high intensities . The proposed removal of excess understory fuels and small diameter trees is expected to help prevent large-scale, stand replacement canopy fires in the Monterey pine forest at Covell Ranch.