The U.S. Forest Service knows it needs to set prescribed burns on thousands of acres in Big Bear every year. This year, it's only burned 20.
, most national forests in California are primed to burn. Climate change has brought the stark reality of warmer temperatures and drier weather. That means more fires burning hotter and for longer than in the past.
The main reason for the short burn window in 2021 was weather. If the forest is too wet, it won't catch fire. If it's too dry or the wind is too strong, a prescribed burn could get out of control. That's what happened here in Big Bear in 2005, when a prescribed fire escaped and burned down a building at the local ski resort. The burn scar on the ski hill is still visible to wary residents living below; even though runaway prescribed fires are rare, the optics are never good.
The Air Quality Management District, which is the local branch of CARB making game-day decisions about prescribed burns, says it denied only one requested burn day in Barba's district in 2021. Barba says the other four she's counting were what AQMD calls"no burn days," when prescribed burns are allowed only by exception. She says on those days, it wasn't worth the ask.
"With our lack of resources, while today would have been a good burn day, tomorrow we're looking at relative humidities in single digits," she explained. If a wildfire ignited, she said,"the resources would get taken away, and now we'd have a prescribed burn that we can't really mop up.""I mean, they're right. Budget and keeping boots on the ground has been a big issue," he said in a recent interview.
Barba estimates that prescribed burns cost roughly $200 per acre. She hopes to tackle more than 20,000 acres, but most of that is currently in the planning stage. Pulling it all off would require more than $4 million that simply isn't available. It's not the only project that fell through during his tenure. The Forest Service is trying to get another 13,000-acre project north of Big Bear Lake approved — after an earlier project in the same location petered out.
The John Muir Project, meanwhile, has concerns about the Forest Service's broader strategies in the area, in particular a process known as"commercial thinning," in which some trees are cut in order to reduce fuel loads, and then sold to offset costs. The Forest Service says that some commercial thinning is required to carry out prescribed burns on its 13,000-acre North Big Bear project.
"We'd strongly consider litigation if the Forest Service is not willing to make substantial changes to its plans," he said. The extremely low water level at Big Bear Lake amidst the state's historic megadrought has beached boat docks that used to float. July 26, 2022.
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