CHICO — A few small, well-planned fires now can serve as protection against large, town-destroying conflagrations later.
That’s the idea behind fire training called Cal TREX — a abbreviated contraction for California Prescribed Fire Training Exchange — and its 110 or so people scheduled to attend at Maple Creek Ranch in Cohasset today and Sunday.
The event will bring together members of federal, state, tribal, local nonprofit and private landowner parties in an effort to learn effective prescribed-fire tactics and methods, according to Eli Goodsell, Ecological Reserves executive director at Chico State and the head of the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. He said the training “will help restore the ecological and community protection benefits of ‘good fire.'”
“Prescribed fire projects are an excellent learning opportunity for our students and fire professionals, while promoting forest health and mitigating future catastrophic fires,” Goodsell explained. He added that the use of prescribed fire also boosts ecosystems by eliminating diseases in the soils.
A similar training took place Oct. 21-22 and had 95 participants.
Training will focus on building a local prescribed-fire crew, and will incorporate hands-on field scenarios, fire line leadership skills, local fire ecology, cultural burning, and fire management. The exchange model offers peer-to-peer learning and training for fire professionals to gain certifications and experience.
Appropriate local and state agencies will approve and issue permits for all planned prescribed burns this fall, winter and spring.
Goodsell said residents in the Cohasset and Forest Ranch areas, as well as in the valley, may see smoke as a result of the prescribed burns. While this small amount of smoke may be a mild inconvenience, residents should regard it as a benefit in reducing the odds of the enormous amounts of smoke a major wildfire would cause.
Training organizers said the cooperating regional entities hosting Cal TREX see prescribed fire as a critical tool to get ahead of the problem, as they face destructive wildfires every year. Wildfires of today result from multiple factors, but a significant cause of extreme fire behavior is the accumulation of vegetation, or “fuels.”
Lightning ignitions and the burning of lands by indigenous people caused regular intervals of fire that reduced these fuels. Fire-management practices of the past century, however, emphasized quick suppression of fires in order to preserve human settlement as well as timber stocks — sacrificing nature’s critically important “housecleaning” by fire.
Participants in this weekend’s training will become a part of an “on-call” team that can conduct safe and effective prescribed burn events, on short notice, when weather conditions change to favor habitat improvement and wildfire mitigation.
