CHICO — A comprehensive new plan for managing Chico’s vegetation and natural resources has come to fruition, with the hope that the community will offer input to help use grant dollars to set the plan in motion.
Chico’s Park and Natural Resources Manager Linda Herman said the first draft of the plan was received July 16 and uses a grant from Cal Fire.
It’s a comprehensive proposal for handling the vegetation management in the city’s park as “There’s been plans in different locations … but there really isn’t a comprehensive one for all the lands the city manages,” Herman said.
The plan is designed to look over all unique needs and ecosystems within each area of the city’s wildland, looking at how different areas that are affected and need specific methods and follow up approaches for management. Noting the effects of climate change, the plan includes both a wildfire risk assessment of the highest-priority areas for treatment and a plant prioritization scheme for the highest-priority species for removal.
“After a century of being deprived of the fire they depend on, many Chico park lands and greenways are overstocked with vegetative fuels,” the plan notes. “This increases the risk that any future wildfire could be catastrophically intense.”
“We want to prioritize areas that are needed the most and plan for the future,” Herman said, for when funding becomes available. Thus the plan contains details about seven different potential projects for preliminary environmental review.
For example, some concerns are for replacing Arundo plants in Little Chico Creek with willow trees. Other areas such as the Verbana Fields need fire danger reduction by improving willow tree health and removing dead fuels. The plan also considers fuel break strategies such as improving access for firefighters along Ten Mile House Road — so fire traveling up or down the canyon will “lay down” and can be contained — and to enhance black oak stands with “healthy” low-intensity fire.
Herman added areas like the Lindo Channel are being studied for use as defensible space, and she is waiting on a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant for help with it. In areas where fuel breaks are the concern, “We would go in and do removal of trees and elevate vegetation,” then continue periodic treatment and goat grazing if needed.
Goats and cattle may be used for natural maintenance of some areas, as is already done in some regions outside the city, she said.
While looking at strategies for fire prevention, there will be less focus on tree removal “unless they’re dead,” Herman said.
The plan outlines uses of healthy fire and grazing techniques for natural maintenance. Herman said the department has relied on the input of Wolfy Rougle, Butte County Ecological Reserve’s forest health watershed coordinator, on preserving natural species.
Rougle said consideration for areas in park lands that were depleted “where not enough resources could tend to all areas it needs to tend” is part of the plan. A more natural, “open brush” focus will change the look of the city’s lands but help to reverse degradation that has occurred, she said.
While most cities in California take land projects one by one, “Doing it project by project is very challenging and also not an efficient use of resources,” she said. This comprehensive process will help show where the city has “shovel ready” projects up for grant funding, where surveys have been done with a clear purpose and strategy in mind.
It helps that Chico has much more natural lands and park space than many other cities, she said.
“We’re living in a time when a history of fire suppression that has messed up our woodlands … to what we see today,” Rougle said.
Inspiration and instruction from indigenous land management methods was taken into account, such as using natural grazing animals or cutting vegetation where needed to thin the landscape more naturally. These methods encourage cultivation of more native plants and biodiversity so the land “looks more like it did when the Mechoopda were the only people managing it,” Rougle said.
“We are trying to listen to that indigenous wisdom and learn as much as we can about the lands we all share now, to help them be more resilient.”
Herman added the city is calling for public comment on the plan and all Chico residents can reach out to her personally by email at linda.herman@chicoca.gov as the draft is reviewed for the next step in the process.
The first draft can be viewed online at bcrcd.org at any time before sending comments to her address.
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July 26, 2020 at 06:33PM
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Chico creates new citywide vegetation management plan - Chico Enterprise-Record
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