Our prescribed fire work was featured in Smithsonian Magazine
More than a 200-mile drive away, in the rolling oak savanna and rugged chaparral rangeland of coastal California—a distinctly different landscape from the Sierra Nevada—prescribed burning can also be an important tool. A few days after a heavy fall rainstorm, I join Mendocino County rancher and volunteer firefighter Kyle Farmer at Magruder Ranch along with his wife, Grace, and their children, June, 7, and Walter, 5. Following the lead of his father-in-law, who long embraced prescribed fire, Farmer uses the practice to help sustain the family’s grass-fed cattle and lamb operation, now in its sixth generation.
We buckle into an all-terrain vehicle, and Farmer drives us through the oak savanna before climbing past madrone forests with red, papery bark. As we reach the top of a ridgeline, Farmer, who is also a founding member of the Mendocino County PBA, stops at the edge of the hillside; black lines from previous prescribed burns are etched into the slope below. “We’ve introduced a mosaic into all the brush on our land, which is going to change how it burns,” he explains. Strategically applying patches of prescribed fire creates a checkerboard pattern that encourages plant and animal variety. Wildlife, such as black-tailed deer and tule elk, also benefit from improved grazing after fire removes old underbrush, allowing new sprigs of vegetation to freely emerge.
In 2017, Magruder Ranch lost 45 pregnant cows during the Redwood Complex Fire, when flames fanned by downhill winds overtook the fleeing herd. Farmer now takes topography and fencing materials into account to maximize the livestock’s potential escape routes in the event of a wildfire. And, eager to avoid future “dozer lines” from heavy machinery scraping away topsoil to create fire containment lines, he pre-emptively uses prescribed fire to clear the land of thick underbrush and other fuels. “If a wildfire does come through, my kids are going to have a beautiful place with old oak trees,” Farmer says. “They will get the chance to take care of the land instead of being handed a problem.”
Historically, most homes in Mendocino’s Potter Valley, including Magruder Ranch, were built on the valley floor or in the lower foothills. But now, recently constructed houses dot the ridgelines amid the chaparral. These homes are part of a larger trend toward a progressively fragmented landscape that makes it harder to both perform controlled burns and save vulnerable structures in the event of a wildfire.
Read the whole article here