Fires crackled in the tinder dry forests of the upper Hat Creek basin last summer. A spectacular lightning show, involving almost 2000 strikes, was the source. To newer residents or those less experienced with Northern Sierra and Southern Cascade forests, the lightning and fires brought home the point about the very serious and growing threat of wildfire in the Burney Creek and Hat Creek Basins.
Because of a decreased snowpack, longer dry season, fire threatens the forest and local communities more than ever before. Concerns about this, along with the health of communities in the area compelled the Shasta Resource Advisory Committee (Shasta RAC) and the Fall River Resource Conservation District (RCD) to launch a novel project focused on landscape and community sustainability.
Both the Shasta RAC and the RCD asked the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment to help launch this project. What is the project? The Sierra Institute is conducting an assessment of socioeconomic health of communities in the two watersheds and is identifying ways a landscape-scale management project can be successfully implemented.
We’ll be collecting data from schools, economic development agencies, the state, as well as interviewing people in the two basins. The Sierra Institute has already interviewed 30 resource agency experts, ranchers, realtors, and other community residents asking the questions: How can we improve social, economic, and environmental conditions in the Burney and Hat Creek Watersheds? How can natural resource management contribute more to both reducing fire risk, and improving forest sustainability and community health?
The two watersheds encompass 364,000 acres of forest, ranch, and farmland, public and private land, and include the communities of Burney, Johnson Park, Hat Creek, Cassel, and Old Station. All these communities are struggling in one way or another with the economic downturn and the departure of families from a rural area where good jobs have grown increasingly scarce.
What is novel about the project is that it will involve people and communities coming together to recommend projects and identify ways they would like to see things improved in their forest and watersheds. This is the kind of lightning we seek: the power of people and communities coming together. If we can catch it, it can make a world of difference in the future of the area.
There are important opportunities for improving economic and ecological stability in this area. There is still a forest industry – three co-generation plants and two sawmills in Burney, and both large and small timber and service contractors –that can remove fuels from some of the overstocked forests. Hat Creek is a blue ribbon fishery, and hunting and other outdoor recreation opportunities abound.
We at the Sierra Institute believe that people are part of the ecosystems where they live, and that healthy ecosystems depend on healthy rural communities. We know that to be successful this effort will require the combined effort of the people and groups who care about the Burney Creek and Hat Creek Watersheds, including those who live, work, and recreate there.
In coming weeks and months, we will be using this forum to share our work and solicit your input. Our hope is to inspire dialogue among people who will be involved in or affected by this project.
Stay tuned for more about the project from this blog, launched not only to report on project activities but to offer opportunity to openly discuss it and another way to collect your input. We believe it’s a more active way of sharing as we go along, and we look forward to your comments.
Jonathan Kusel and Ann Moote
Sierra Institute for Community and Environment