The Fire Safe Council and Upper Salinas-Las Tablas Resource Conservation District have secured over $7 million through several grants for the North Coast Planning Project.
“There’s only three naturally occurring pine stands in the state, and one of them occurs here in Cambria,” said Spencer Gordon, Upper Salinas-Las Tablas Resource Conservation District Forestry Project Manager.
The focus will be on community preparedness, fire hazard reduction, and ecological restoration in Cambria's pine forest. That includes the areas of Rancho Marino, Fiscalini Ranch, Covell Ranch, and the Cambria Pines Ecological Reserve.
“Our efforts are based towards the management of the health of that rare ecosystem,” Gordon said.
The project will emphasize forest health, fuel reduction, and reforestation, including reducing the number of trees to a level the area can sustain.
Without naturally occurring fires in the pine forest, Gordon says it has become overgrown.
“Lack of that natural fire regime what we start to see is an unnatural accumulation of dead and downed fuel which is fuel for fires,” he added.
The project will mimic natural processes to promote a healthy, less fire-prone forest.
“A healthy forest, unfortunately, needs fire, so without that fire happening in our area, we have to go in and perform a lot of the mitigation tactics that fire would have provided,” said Chief Michael Burkey, Cambria Fire Department.
Gordon says it has taken 150 years to reach the current conditions in the Cambria pine forest.
“It will take a long time to get them to a point to where they are resilient to future threats of climate change and wildfire threats,” Gordon said.
These locations will be treated at least once over the next five years.
