California plans a controlled burn among the sequoias

The state of California says it will conduct a controlled burn at a popular state park, warning visitors of partial closures.

Calaveras Big Trees State Park is famous for its giant sequoia trees. To aid forest health, the California Department of Parks and Recreation says it will work in tandem with CAL FIRE to oversee prescribed burns on some 1,300 acres at the state park. Aside from trail closures, the parks authority warns that smoke may linger in the area well after the fires stopped burning.

The park’s managers say their prescribing burning will happen as early as October 30 depending on weather conditions. They’ll need to monitor wind conditions to ensure that they don’t lose control of the blaze or send too much smoke to neighboring communities downwind.

The state’s residents have suffered greatly from a series of devastating wildfires, so officials can expect very close scrutiny of their forthcoming prescribed burning operation.

At the same time, wildfires have been an integral and natural part of forest ecology for millennia. Fires create conditions for new growth and benefit long-term ecosystem function. The park’s managers say that’s their intention with this forthcoming burn plan, insisting that the work is designed to protect the giant iconic trees at the nearly century-old state park.

“The protection and stewardship of giant sequoia groves at Calaveras Big Trees State Park has been a priority for California State Parks since the park opened to the public in 1931,” they said in a release. “Prescribed burning is part of the department’s program for vegetation management to increase the resilience of the forest and promote new giant sequoia growth.” The burn will be paid for from a state fund operated under California’s Wildfire and Forest Resiliency Program.

Visitors are forewarned that they should expect to find “the South Grove Trail, Beaver Creek area, Bradley Grove Trail, fire road around the South Grove, and the Walter W. Smith Memorial Parkway south of the Stanislaus River,” closed to all public access as long as the burn program is being conducted, and possibly for some time afterward.

Communities nearby may also experience some smoky conditions, officials say, though they add that the smoke won’t be nearly as bad compared to actual wildfires.

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