Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment are releasing today a new policy report: Branching Out: Waste Biomass Policies To Promote Wildfire Resilience and Emission Reduction. The report offers solutions to develop a sustainable market for the residual waste material generated by wildfire treatments on forested and other high fire risk lands.
In response to California’s devastating wildfires over the past several years, government and private landowners are removing excess material at risk of burning, such as dead trees and other vegetation, to create fire breaks that protect lives and buildings. Once cut and stacked, this material risks burning in the next fire, creating additional carbon emissions and air pollution.
Yet rather than leave the waste debris on the forest floor, property owners could potentially use it to create wood products, chips and mulch, or other end uses, which can help defray the costs of wildfire treatments and offset emissions from the production of these products.
To advance this conversation, CLEE and the Emmett Institute convened a small group of experts to discuss opportunities to improve the market for debris material. Several key solutions emerged from the conversation, including for the governor and state legislature to:
- Create a role for the state to serve as a broker for woody feedstock supply, potentially alongside local governments, facilitated through the California Natural Resources Agency.
- Direct the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research to support data mapping and brokerage initiatives for regional supply chain management.
- Dedicate resources towards forest resilience workforce and economic development at local and regional levels.
State agencies are already tackling this issue from several different angles. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research oversees five pilot projects intended to improve feedstock aggregation mechanisms. The pilot projects are spread throughout the state, and local leaders jointly manage the entities under combined local land use authorities delegated by local government partners. Meanwhile, CAL FIRE’s Business and Workforce Development Grant program offers up to $24 million to projects that advance the wood products market and workforce.
To avoid the risk of unintended negative consequences, such as clearing of healthy forest material that does not promote wildfire resilience, state leaders could deploy the solutions presented in the report over a limited time period, focused narrowly on debris material, in regions with the greatest need for state support (due to material accumulation or potential for community benefits, or a combination of both). They could also ensure they integrate these practices into the broader forest management and wildfire resilience context.
Ultimately, these vegetation management practices are one component of a broader forest and wildfire management strategy that should include prescribed burn and more intentional siting of population centers outside of high fire risk areas. However, by following these recommendations, the state can ensure that when land managers complete vegetation management actions, they have the option to remove and dispose of the residual waste material in a responsible manner, offsetting emissions and reducing demand for new wood products.
For a full list of solutions and more detailed discussion, view the policy report.
CLEE & UCLA Law will host a public webinar on Monday, May 9 from 4:00pm to 5:00pm Pacific Time to discuss report findings and hear from a panel of experts who will share their insights on the problem and potential solutions. Speakers include:
- Jessica Morse, Deputy Secretary, California Natural Resources Agency
- Phil Saksa, Ph.D., Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Blue Forest
Register to join!
Today marks 30 years since the outbreak of a devastating wildfire that swept through the Oakland-Berkeley hills of the San Francisco Bay Area in 1991. More than 3,000 homes burned in the fire, and 25 people lost their lives.
I happened to know two of them: my beloved 6th grade teacher Dr. Phil Loggins and my high schoolmate Gabriela Reed. I had just turned 15, and now 30 years later it still hurts deeply to think of their loss and the lives they could have lived — and touched — since then.
Dr. Loggins, 51 when he died in his carport that day, overcome by the smoke and heat, was one of the most influential and impactful teachers I had. His “doctor” title alone is a big indication. He was a science Ph.D who decided to teach public school sixth graders like me about both the natural world and the meaning of personal growth.
His approach was unusual and effective. For one thing, he loved animals and included live versions of them in his lessons. His classroom was filled with tanks of snakes and rodents. In science class, we learned about the taxonomy of classifying plants and animals, while laughing in amazement as Dr. Loggins let his boa constrictor snake named Honey Buns encircle us on our shoulders.
He nurtured our creativity, reading books aloud to the class in theatrical voices so we could appreciate spoken rather than just written language. In one memorable exercise, he turned off the overhead lights and played the opening instrumental theme to the 1986 movie Top Gun, asking us to let our thoughts soar with the music. With the lights back on and inspiration achieved, we then went about our creative writing with the images we had seen in our minds.
He had a profound love of nature, which he wanted to instill in us. On a weeklong school camping trip near Point Reyes, he had us go on solo hikes to be alone with our thoughts in the wilderness, so we could appreciate the world around us without the distraction of conversation and friends (what he would have thought of smart phones). He showed us photos he took on a projector of amazing scenes from his journeys in nature. It took on added poignancy that he once displayed a photo of a beautiful fallen leaf, bright in primary colors, and he reminded us, “even in death, life can be beautiful.”
I wonder how much of the work I do today on climate change and environmental preservation is due to his influence. He taught hundreds of kids in his too-short career, and I know his legacy lives on in part through his students and those to whom we’ve tried to pass on his lessons.
Gabriela Reed was 18 when she died in the fire, visiting a parent and trapped in her car as the fire exploded in heat and size. She was two years ahead of me, a senior in high school, but she had sat next to me in intro Spanish class, and I had gotten to know her a bit. She had a wonderful and mischievous sense of both humor and fun, quick to laugh and to support her friends. She had such youthful energy and vibrancy that I still struggle to imagine she’s not with us anymore.
At the time of the fire, I attributed their deaths and the other tremendous losses that day to an act of nature. But now I know, from working on wildfire issues here in California, that what happened that day was in fact preventable.
The brutality of the fire was the result of decades of fire suppression and lack of vegetation management. In simpler terms, the area was overgrown with trees and shrubs, including flammable and non-native Eucalyptus trees, which were growing too close to homes that featured vulnerable wood-shingled roofs. When the fire hit, it should have been a “cool” grass fire that would never leap to the crowns of well-spaced, large native trees like oaks and redwoods. It should have been easily contained, and if not containable, it should have moved slowly enough for residents to evacuate safely.
Going forward, we need to dramatically boost fuel treatments across the state, as climate change makes these wildfire conditions even more severe. More people are now aware of the fire danger and the impacts of smoke, so the politics is supportive. But the work is still happening too slowly, as more fires burn and more lives are devastated and lost.
Nothing can be done now to change those tragic events 30 years ago, but I hope that remembering the suffering and lives lost will increase the urgency of the task. And in the meantime, I at least will take a moment to remember and grieve these loved ones taken from us too soon.
Rest in peace, Dr. Loggins and Gabriela.
On this morning’s 10am edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll mark Indigenous People’s Day by discussing how Native American traditional knowledge can help find solutions to our modern climate crisis.
We’ll discuss the Yurok Tribe’s decision to grant personhood to the troubled Klamath River in Northern California. The river and its salmon runs near the Oregon border have been greatly affected by climate change and adverse policy decisions, leading to a mass salmon die-off.
We’ll also discuss the Karuk Tribe’s use of traditional land management practices to help California fight mega fires during these times of ever-drier forests and less reliable rainfall.
Joining me to discuss these issues are:
- Lisa Hilman, a Karuk tribal member and program director for the Píkyav Field Institute, a unit of the Karuk Tribe’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) dedicated to environmental education and protection; and
- Amy Cordalis, general counsel for the Yurok Tribe and a tribal member, life-long fisher and ceremonial practitioner.
You can stream it live at 10am today or listen to 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call 866-798-TALK with questions or comments!
Catastrophic wildfires are primarily a public health and safety threat. But they also affect water quality and supply in ways that many people don’t always appreciate. Specifically, a better managed forest with regular, low-level burns can improve water supply and quality through increased and cleaner runoff.
UC Berkeley research is bearing this dynamic out. As referenced in the video above, students and faculty have been studying the Illilouette Creek Basin, a “bowl of pure Yosemite granite,” which since the 1970s has been exempted from California’s backwards policy of fire suppression. As a result, the area has been allowed to burn regularly, leading to healthy and balanced forest conditions of fewer, bigger trees, more evenly spaced.
The effect has been significant for water flows, as the lead researchers have found:
[F]ire can also be a boon to both local ecosystems and water users far downstream — including humans — largely because fire-thinned forests consume less water and offer more space for meadows and wetlands.
“If you take out deep-rooted trees and you replace them with more shallow-rooted plants like shrubs and grasses, those don’t have access to as much water and they don’t use as much,” [professor of environmental engineering Sally] Thompson explains. “So in the absence of those trees, you’re storing more water in the soils and groundwater, and that leaves the whole system more primed to start creating runoff and streamflow.”
And regular fires also means greater biodiversity. All in all, it’s another strong benefit from managing our forests more responsibly by thinning out excess small trees and allowing natural burns to occur. We need it for safety, the environment — and our increasingly imperiled water supply.
