Recap: Dashboard Virtual Workshop

Recap: Treatment Dashboard Virtual Workshop
On Tuesday, November 14 the Task Force hosted a Virtual Public Workshop on the CA Wildfire & Landscape Resilience Interagency Treatment Dashboard. The goal of the workshop was to gather input from those using the Treatment Tracking System and Dashboard to improve how data is accessed and displayed, and to ensure we are providing transparency and effective planning information on statewide wildfire resilience treatments.
If you missed the workshop, or want to look back at what was covered, click on the buttons above to watch a video of the presentation from Alan Telhelm, Assistant Deputy Director for Climate and Energy at CAL FIRE, and a key architect of the Dashboard. You can also view and download Alan’s presentation and take a moment to answer a quick survey (available soon) for gathering additional input on how the Dashboard can be most effective.
Wildfire Mitigation and Management Commission Releases Final Report

Wildfire Mitigation and Management Commission Releases Final Report
On September 27, the federal Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, co-chaired by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Interior and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, released a final report submitted to Congress that reflects a comprehensive review of the federal wildfire system. The report makes 148 recommendations covering seven key themes:
- Urgent new approaches to address the wildfire crisis
- Supporting collaboration to improve partner involvement
- Shifting from reactive to proactive in planning for, mitigating and recovering from fire
- Enabling beneficial fire to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire
- Supporting and expanding the workforce to hire and retain the wildland firefighting staff needed to address the crisis
- Modernizing tools for informed decision-making to better leverage available technology and information
- Investing in resilience through increased spending now to reduce costs in the long run
New Online Treatment Dashboard to Track Wildfire Resilience Projects

New Online Treatment Dashboard to Track Wildfire Resilience Projects
On August 29, the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force launched the beta version of a first-of-its-kind Interagency Treatment Dashboard beta that displays the size and location of state and federal forest and landscape resilience projects in California.
The dashboard offers a one-stop-shop to access data, provide transparency, and align the efforts of more than a dozen agencies to build resilient landscapes and communities in California. It reports treatment activities such as prescribed fire, targeted grazing, uneven-aged timber harvest, mechanical and hand fuels reduction, and tree planting. Users can sort treatments by region, county, land ownership and more.
The beta version of the dashboard will continue to be refined to include additional data, including projects by local and tribal entities, along with revisions based on public feedback. An official launch is expected in spring 2024 with more complete data on projects implemented in 2022.
Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund Pilot
Prescribed FireLiability Claims Fund Pilot
The Need
One of the primary obstacles to increasing the use of prescribed and cultural fires in California is the difficulty of obtaining adequate liability coverage. While escape rates are very low, there is always some risk when working with fire. Liability coverage protects qualified practitioners, property owners, and the public from the associated financial risk. However, many practitioners on private or tribal land are unable to obtain affordable private insurance for beneficial fire operations.
The Legislation
In September 2022 Governor Newsom signed into law SB 926, which established a pilot Prescribed Fire Claims Fund. This legislation authorizes claims covering certain losses arising from prescribed fires and cultural burning until January 1, 2028. This claims fund is intended to both encourage increased beneficial fire use and demonstrate that prescribed and cultural burning is low risk, to entice private insurers back into the market.
The Fund
Administered by CAL FIRE, the $20 million allocated for the Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund Pilot will cover losses in the rare instance that a prescribed or cultural burn escapes control, providing up to $2 million in coverage for prescribed fire projects led by a qualified burn boss or cultural practitioner. The fund is meant to demonstrate that carefully planned, resourced, and implemented beneficial fire is a low-risk land management tool to mitigate high-severity wildfires and promote healthy and resilient landscapes.
To Enroll
Enrollment in the Fund is done by completing the California Prescribed Fire Claims Fund Online Application. To be eligible to enroll in the Fund, a prescribed fire must be conducted or supervised by a Burn Boss or a Cultural Fire Practitioner for a Cultural Burn.
Questions
CAL FIRE offers a detailed set of Frequently Asked Questions, covering everything from enrollment, application approval, claims submissions, coverage limits and much more.
RESOURCES

Interview with Lenya Quinnn-Davidson on the Prescribed Fire Claims Fund
California Takes a Big Step to Help Insure Private Companies That Fight Fire With Fire
Wildfire & Forest Resilience Treatment Tracking and Mapping

Wildfire & Forest Resilience Treatment Tracking and Mapping
At the March 30 Task Force meeting, the Task Force’s Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Work Group gave an update on their efforts to build an interagency treatment tracker. The group is assembling federal, state, local, private data on planned, active, and completed projects statewide, including those on forests, grasslands, shrublands, and covering approximately 60 different activities (type of work completed). The goals include tracking progress toward state/federal acreage targets; facilitating regional planning and monitoring; and assessing benefits/costs beyond “acres treated.” The Task Force anticipates having a publicly available treatment tracking map and dashboard by summer 2023.
RESOURCES
Culturing Burning: Building Leadership, Trust, and Capacity

Culturing Burning: Building Leadership, Trust, and Capacity
The Karuk Tribe hosted a day long workshop that included presentations from Karuk and Yurok tribal members.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) is actively engaged with tribes to better understand how cultural burning is different from prescribed burning and then applying these lessons learned. By building relationships with tribal practitioners, CAL FIRE staff are gaining new insights into fire management and finding new ways to support tribal fire management practices.
As California continues wildfire and forest resilience efforts throughout the state, many changes are underway to empower governments at all levels and private landowners to treat more acres in the effort to keep California communities safe and better protected.
One tool in the toolbox for achieving this: using fire to treat brush and vegetation before wildfires occur. Prescribed fire and cultural burning are fuels reduction tools recognized as cost effective and ecologically beneficial to the landscape. Indigenous peoples in California have a long history of using fire to modify the landscape and cultural burning has been conducted by indigenous tribes for millennia. Reintroducing this tool to the landscape is a mutual goal for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), and native tribes.


“By building strong relationships, and through the Tribes’ sharing of knowledge about cultural burning, we can gain a deeper understanding and connectedness to our environment that will help our staff to better support cultural burning,” said Len Nielson, CAL FIRE Staff Chief, Prescribed Fire. “This understanding is needed to have cultural burning occur at an increased pace and scale.”
It also fits within the department’s broader mission. CAL FIRE is responsible for fire protection and stewardship of over 31 million acres of California’s privately-owned wildlands. Assisting landowners and land managers with the support, knowledge, and skills to treat their property safely and effectively with fire is a critical strategy for sustaining the values we cherish for managing our state forests and other wildlands.
In this spirit, a number of activities are happening. CAL FIRE is supporting a burn boss training and certification, providing grants to Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs), establishing a liability claims fund, creating prescribed fire training centers, and supporting California’s tribal communities to revitalize cultural burning. These are several of the strategies that CAL FIRE is working on to get more beneficial fire on the ground to help improve the health and resiliency of our forests.
“It was a pleasure to host so many great people from across multiple sectors of state government, and to have such a strong presence of CAL FIRE leadership at our event,” commented Bill Tripp, Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe. “It is, after all, the personal relationships and mutual understandings that we can establish based on real world, place-based situations that will help us to truly address the many challenges we face,” said Tripp.
The workshop included presentations from Karuk and Yurok tribal members and a field tour of previously burned areas showing how prescribed fire and cultural burning practices are interrelated for resource protection and revitalization of resources. In attendance were the CAL FIRE leadership team from Sacramento, local and regional foresters, archeologists, and environmental scientists from CAL FIRE and other state agencies. Building relationships and learning about the connections between culture and the landscape from tribal cultural practitioners is a good first step in fostering relationships with Tribal partners and other land managers in California to achieve our wildfire and forest resilience goals.
Photos: Tisina Parker
USFS Will Resume its Prescribed Fire Program

USDA Forest Service Chief Randy Moore Announces Actions the USFS Will Take to Resume its Prescribed Fire Program
Update on USFS’ Prescribed Fire Pause. In a statement announced on September 8, USFS Chief Randy Moore has decided – based on a thorough review, findings, and recommendations provided by its National Review Team – to conditionally resume the USFS’s prescribed fire program nationwide. The conditions include a requirement that all USFS units immediately follow all seven tactical recommendations identified in the National Prescribed Fire Program Review. These actions will ensure prescribed fire plans are up to date with the most recent science, that key factors and conditions are closely evaluated the day of a prescribed burn, and that decisionmakers are engaged in those burns in real time to determine whether a prescribed burn should be implemented.
RESOURCES
Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
U.S. Forest Service Announcement
California Air Resources Board Releases California Smoke Spotter 2.0

California Air Resources Board Releases California Smoke Spotter 2.0
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has released a major update to its California Smoke Spotter mobile app to help users protect themselves from smoke during wildfire season. New features of the app include wildfire information and alerts, a 24-hour wildfire smoke forecast, and Air Quality Index (AQI) data from PurpleAir sensors to provide users with real-time smoke conditions (in addition to AQI data from permanent and temporary air monitors).
California Smoke Spotter 2.0 still contains its original features including prescribed fire details, alerts and smoke forecasts, as well as information on how users can protect themselves from smoke. It’s available to download on the App Store and Google Play.
This achievement contributes to the Task Force’s broader goal of strengthening the protection of communities, and more specific aim to reduce the health impacts of smoke.
RESOURCES
State Can Fight Fire With Prescribed Fire By Funding Jobs In The Field

State Can Fight Fire With Prescribed Fire By Funding Jobs In The Field
“It is now accepted that prescribed fire is needed to conserve and restore biodiversity, prevent catastrophic fires, stabilize carbon and promote public health and safety. To address the pace and scale of prescribed fire that is needed, we must invest in careers in prescribed fire.” Read this guest commentary in CalMatters.org from Tom Gardali, CEO, Audubon Canyon Ranch.
RESOURCES
LA Times Op-Ed: Why Forest Managers Need To Team Up With Indigenous Fire Practitioners

LA Times Op-Ed: Why Forest Managers Need To Team Up With Indigenous Fire Practitioners
Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2022, By Don Hankins, Scott Stephens and Sara A. Clark
The forests of the Western United States are facing an unprecedented crisis, besieged by wildfires and climate change. There is a precedent for part of the solution, though: intentional burns such as those set by Indigenous peoples.