EDITORIAL: California has a long way to go to meet wildfire prevention goal

Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA)

Jun. 25—One key part of reducing wildfires is preventive, controlled burns. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published a study saying that California needed to burn 20 million acres to make the state safe. That's an area roughly the size of Maine.

Six months later, California agencies and the U.S. Forest Service agreed on a plan to use brush clearing, logging and prescribed fires to thin out 1 million acres a year by 2025.

Those numbers put the uproar this week over whether Gov. Gavin Newsom misled the public about the state's wildfire prevention efforts leading into the 2020 wildfire season into proper perspective. It's a furor over the crumbs that misses the big picture.

CapRadio and NPR's California Newsroom reported Wednesday that the governor overstated "by an astounding 690% the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns" in areas "needed to protect the state's most vulnerable communities."

Newsom claimed the state had carried out fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the radio report said the state's own data show the actual number turned out to be 11,399 acres.

A spokeswoman for the state challenged the report, saying the 11,399 acres treated adequately protects the entire 90,000 acres. Sounds like the Newsom administration may be trying to pull off another public relations sleight of hand.

Either way, though, that's only a pittance compared to what California and the federal government should be doing.

Newsom has demonstrated a disturbing lack of transparency during the pandemic. He needs to come clean on what CalFire has actually accomplished in wildfire prevention during his years as governor and provide real leadership for substantive future efforts.

California should be meeting its commitment to the federal government to ramp up wildfire prevention on a massive scale.

The challenge for the state is that 58% of California's 33 million acres of forest are owned by the federal government, and an estimated 39% are owned by private landowners — many of whom are poor — leaving only 3% owned by the state. In 2018, the U.S. Forest Service reported that 99% of its forest lands were at a high risk of dangerous wildfires, but it was utilizing controlled burns to reduce the fire risk on only 1%.

The Nature Sustainability report cites limited funding, liability concerns, environmental regulations and inadequate trained personnel as the major barriers to increasing wildfire prevention efforts.

Newsom is calling for a record $2 billion fire-safety budget for California. But the U.S. Congress is still dithering over how to make a serious investment in wildfire prevention, despite knowing that in 2020 California experienced five of the six biggest wildfires in state history, burning 4.5 million acres, killing 31 people and destroying 10,000 homes and buildings. All told, nearly 26,000 wildfires burned 9.5 million acres in states west of the Rockies, and 75% of the acreage burned was on federal land.

California burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year in the 1980s and 1990s. By 2017, that number had dropped to about 13,000 acres. While Newsom tried to increase those numbers, the pandemic hampered that effort. CalFire treated only 32,000 acres in 2020 and 24,000 acres through Memorial Day this year. It all pales in comparison to what's really needed.

The agreement between the state and the federal government last August required each side to scale up wildfire prevention efforts to 500,000 acres a year by 2025. But CalFire has only committed to expanding its prescribed fire programs to 100,000 acres by 2025, which would leave the state far short of holding up its side of the deal.

It's time for the governor to be transparent and provide real leadership to achieve meaningful statewide fire-prevention levels.

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