The 80th annual San Luis Obispo Cattlemen’s Association meeting was held at the Paso Robles Event Center.
Cal Fire met with members of the San Luis Obispo County Cattlemen’s Association hoping they can work together to utilize controlled burns better to prepare for future wildfires.
The goal is for all 21 Cal Fire units to conduct 2,500 acres of prescribed burns, totaling more than 50,000 acres across the state.
Those burns would help ensure firefighters have a better chance of stopping a future wildfire early.
“Our goal is to kind of create a patchwork throughout the county of projects where we know that we can change the vegetation, structure age dynamics to create an area we know we can get into should a wildfire come through,” said one Cal Fire firefighter.
Allan Teixeira, a resident of Thousand Hills Ranch near Pismo Beach, tells me it took him 10 years to get a prescribed burn on his property.
When he finally got the permit, he said Cal Fire burned 300 acres of vegetation for the week-long project.
“Pismo is our neighbor on the other side of the hill and we just tried to be a good neighbor, reduce the amount of brush and dead trees, and create more grass for the cattle,” said Teixeira
Teixeira says it's something all ranchers can do to help protect nearby communities.
“They did an excellent job,” said Teixeira. “In fact, they were just there yesterday to look at the next piece they're going to burn, so we’re going to do another.”
Cal Fire says conducting prescribed burns annually would go a long way toward reducing overall fire risk.
“If you look at big fires like the Carr Fire or the Sonoma fires, a lot of those fires were stopped on private ranches,” said Anthony Stornetta, California Cattlemen’s Association fire committee chair. “Once it gets into the structures, it's very difficult to stop a fire, so doing these prescribed fires and providing escape routes, safety zones for our community, our firefighters, that's key for any success in stopping a large fire.”
Fire officials say it's a long, intense process before they can move forward with a prescribed burn.
“Projects take a lot of time, not just the environmental due diligence that we go through, but also just the agreements and land-owner cooperation, seasonality, and availability of resources,” said one Cal Fire firefighter.
Local government officials are trying to ease the burden.
“This year there is an effort, Senate Bill 1101 by Senator Monique Limón, that tries to put prescribed fire and cultural fire essentially on the same footing as Cal Fire's emergency response for wildfires,” said Kirk Wilbur, California Cattle Association, Vice President of Government Affairs. “SB 1101 would simplify and streamline that contracting and procurement to make it a little easier for Cal Fire to respond to favorable burn windows. Right now, they have weeks or months of build-up before a prescribed fire.”
Ranch owners interested in holding prescribed burns on their property can contact the Range Improvement Association for more information.
