After a three-year, on-the-ground assessment of the park’s Illilouette Creek basin, UC Berkeley researchers concluded that a strategy dating to 1973 of managing wildfires with minimal suppression and almost no preemptive, so-called prescribed burns has created a landscape more resistant to catastrophic fire, with more diverse vegetation and forest structure and increased water storage, mostly in the form of meadows in areas cleared by fires.

William Stewart, PhD Forestry Specialist, Co-Director of the Center for Forestry & Center for Fire Research and Outreach, and other eight other scientists came together to write this commentary for the initiative that supported the inclusion of forest biomass issues in the proposed FY2017 Interior Appropriations bill. 

If you think it’s been a fiery year, we’re only just getting started. Since January, the number of fires threatening areas guarded by California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has jumped roughly 23 percent compared to the five-year average. Their size has grown, too, by nearly 90 percent, according to data released by the agency.