Yuba Forest Network’s First Field Tour!  

After the Yuba Forest Network Quarterly meeting on Friday, May 3rd, SYRCL’s Forest Conservation Project Manager, Anne Marie Holt, led participants on a field tour in Nevada City to learn more about fuels reduction treatment on private property with Kipchoge Spencer and the Hoyt-Purdon Fuel Reduction and Prescribed Fire Project with Melissa Grim from American Rivers. 

Kipchoge Spencer is a member of the Yuba Bear Burn Co-Op. The YBBC is comprised of private land stewards who are doing fuels reduction work with the support, primarily, of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, American Rivers. and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (the primary funder of the Hoyt-Purdon project). The Co-Op has a mission to build a knowledgeable public capable of burning in a safe, legal, beneficial, and responsible manner and empower private landowners through education, networking, and volunteer labor to practice good fire.   

YBBC supports a cooperative network of satellite neighborhood prescribed burn associations, neighbors, agencies, non-profit organizations, and other community partners engaged in local burns that are legal and approved. Membership in YBBC is open and they provide opportunities to attend (often free) trainings, participate in local burns, and borrow equipment.  

We applaud the dedication private landowners have in treating their land to increase the effectiveness of other large-scale projects. As Kipchoge says, “We have the responsibility to do this kind of work with the land we’re blessed to be in relationship with, and there are a bunch of supporting organizations out there that can help. There is a need for more education to help people know that this work is accessible, doesn’t require special knowledge to begin, and that there’s financial support for it.” Here’s a writeup he did of the work on his land and how it was funded. 

Melissa Grim from American Rivers spoke to participants about the Hoyt-Purdon Fuel Reduction and Prescribed Fire Project. This project encompasses 570 acres of private land, extending along roughly two miles of the South Yuba River in Nevada County, California. The project will reduce wildfire risk and impact for six nearby communities and the Yuba watershed, resulting in multiple watershed, ecological, community, and capacity benefits and will increase the pace of ecologically sound forest management in the long term. It will employ a combination of hand and mechanical thinning and prescribed fire treatments to reduce fuels and reduce the threat of high-severity wildfires directly adjacent to the South Yuba River. This threat reduction will protect the watershed and nearby communities that also face the risks of impaired water quality and supply and aquatic habitat, as well as the loss of life and property.  

The Hoyt-Purdon Fuel Reduction and Prescribed Fire Project will restore a healthier and more natural forest structure and fire regime while building local capacity to pursue wildfire risk reduction projects using prescribed fire. This will complete significant fuels reduction, and it will reintroduce prescribed burning on private land within the South Yuba River Canyon and those adjacent to the existing Deer Creek Fuel Break and South Yuba River State Park. This will extend an existing fuel break to provide protection to nearby communities from fires originating in the South Yuba Canyon, which receives over a half million visitors each year, and will safeguard the watershed from catastrophic wildfire impacts. 

American Rivers acknowledges the threat that wildfires pose to rivers by engaging in “river smart” fuels management efforts that will protect rivers and the communities that surround them. These efforts will aim to reduce the risk of wildfire and improve forest health while protecting and developing the health of rivers and watersheds. Fuels management is the process of removing excess vegetation by thinning vegetation and burning in forested areas. Practices like these improve forest health and resilience in the case of wildfires. Fuels management can have a significant impact on water supply while simultaneously reducing wildfire risk.  

There are several objectives the Hoyt-Purdon Fuel Reduction and Prescribed Fire Project hope to accomplish. One objective is to reduce the risk and impacts of severe wildfire to the high fire risk communities of Nevada City and Grass Valley and four other high-fire risk communities adjacent to the South Yuba River canyon. This would reduce the threat of wildfire to the immediate and adjacent slopes of the South Yuba River and protect the watershed from wildfire’s detrimental effects. Other objectives are to enhance the ecological value of the landscape by creating a more heterogeneous forest structure that is tempered by fire and resilient to future natural disturbances and climate scenarios, introduce and demonstrate the social and ecological benefits of prescribed fire in various thinned fuel profiles, facilitate cost effective, long-term maintenance through the use of fire, and boost local experience, capacity, and coordination to plan and implement fuel treatments, including prescribed fire, to increase the pace and scale of wildfire risk reduction.  

To find out more about the work of the Yuba Forest Network, a central networking hub to connect resources and practitioners across the watershed, please visit https://yubariver.org/restore/yuba-forest-network. To sign up for the Yuba Forest Network newsletter, contact Anne Marie Holt, SYRCL’s Forest Conservation Project Manager, at annemarie@yubariver.org