NPS Ecologist Says Prescribed Burns Are Wrong Solution In The Malibu Mountains
Written by 991KBU on December 2, 2020
Why are there no controlled burns in the mountains above Malibu??
That question has been raised again and again … by residents who are worried about years of accumulated dead trees and brush.
Particularly of concern is the area above the big rocket neighborhood of eastern Malibu.
LA County fire had planned a controlled burn there several years ago to lessen the threat of a fire sweeping through the big rock Mesa.
More than 200 homes are at risk there.
But activists who controls the Las Virgenes Federation of homeowners object strongly to the use of controlled burns … and they convinced LA county supervisor Sheila Kuehl to cancel the fire departments plans for the control burns.
yesterday … the the National Parks Conservation Association had a public seminar on the recovery from the Woolsey Fire … which churned thru he Santa Monica Mountains.
The Woolsey Fire burned close to 97,000 acres in the mountains, causing $6 billion in damages and taking the lives of three people.
Despite that danger …. it’s a bad idea for prescribed burns … says a restoration ecologist at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Joseph Algiers was speaking at a seminar on the web yesterday …
NEWSCART 73100 PRESCRIBED TOO MUCH
“The issue with fire in the Santa Monica Mountains is that we are experiencing too much fire.
“Prescribed fire is a valuable tool in certain systems, but the Santa Monica Mountains is not one of those systems.”
The chaparral woodlands of the Santa Monica Mountains are not at all like the forests or foothills of elsewhere in California.
Algiers says what works elsewhere does not work here.
NEWSCART 73099 PRESCRIBED WEEDS
“If we had a fire once every 50 to 100 years in our mountains, that would be enough time for the vegetation to recover and that’s kind of the fire regime that our system is used to.
“But we have areas in our mountains that have burned 12 times in the last hundred years and so those shrubs that take years to recover take some years before they start producing seed and replenishing with seedlings, you burn them enough times and they disappear and get replaced with weeds.”
But there are areas in the mountains above Malibu that have not burned in 50 years … and some of those areas are the dangerous places like surrounding big rock.
While parks ecologists feel controlled fires are dangerous … the county fire department feels otherwise.
In the middle … Malibu residents … who at the west end have seen the weeds and brush grow back … and in the east end … 100 years of accumulated wood … dead trees and other potential fuel for catastrophe.
