Cost-Effective Fire Management for Southern California's Chaparral Wilderness: An Analytical Procedure1

Fire management has always meant fire suppression to the managers of the chaparral covered southern California National Forests. Today, Forest Service fire management programs must be cost effective, while wilderness fire management objectives are aimed at recreating natural fire regimes. A cost-effectiveness analysis has been developed to compare fire management options for meeting these objectives in California's chaparral wilderness. This paper describes the analytical procedure using examples from a study currently being conducted for the Los Padres National Forest, and discusses some preliminary results. The southern California National Forests (Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino, and Cleveland) were originally established to protect the area's chaparral watersheds from fire, but now bear many additional demands and values. For example, over 35 percent of the Los Padres National Forest is designated or proposed wilderness. The goal of fire management in Forest Service wilderness is the restoration and continuance of natural fire regimes (USDA Forest Service 1986). Fire is a natural component of chaparral ecosystems. But, restoring fire's natural role will be difficult and expensive given past fire suppression policies and present urban-wildland interface conditions. Forest managers are now charged with restoring this natural fire regime in a cost-effective manner. Prescribed lightning fire management, prescribed burning, and the use of "appropriate suppression responses" are legal wilderness fire management options (USDA Forest Service 1984). Prescribed lightning fire management is the use of highly detailed prescriptions to monitor and manage lightning fires. The prescriptions include environmental conditions, air quality constraints, fire and weather histories, limitations on size and intensity, probability that the fire will Presented at the Symposium on Fire and Watershed Management, October 26-28, 1988, Sacramento, California. Graduate Research Assistant and Associate Professor of the Natural Resources Management Department, respectively, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif. remain within acceptable size limits, safety of firefighters and the public, and availability of suppression forces if the fire leaves prescription and must be suppressed. Prescribed burning is similar to prescribed lightning fire management except that Forest Service land managers ignite the fires on their own time schedule when burning conditions are optimal (which often means out of the natural fire season). Any fire not classified as a prescribed fire is a wildfire and must receive an appropriate suppression response. But, Forest Service policy no longer requires this response to be intensive suppression efforts aimed at keeping the fire as small as possible (a control response), as a wildfire can now be contained or confined. Containment is to surround a fire with minimal control lines and utilize natural barriers to stop its spread. Confinement is to limit a fire's spread to a predetermined area principally by the use of natural barriers, preconstructed barriers, and environmental conditions (USDA Forest Service 1984). Southern California Forest managers are planning to continue intensive suppression efforts on wildfires and to maintain chaparral wilderness fire regimes through prescribed burns (USDA Forest Service 1988). However, appropriate suppression responses or lightning fire management might be more cost-effective approaches (that is, might reduce the costs and impacts of fire suppression and allow more acres to burn under natural conditions). This paper has three main objectives: 1. To describe a cost-effectiveness analysis (CFA) to compare fire management options for California's chaparral wilderness. 2. To illustrate its use through examples from a study being undertaken for the San Rafael and Dick Smith Wilderness Areas on the Los Padres National Forest. 3. To discuss some of the preliminary 3 findings of the Los Padres Analysis. The Los Padres CEA is currently being conducted through a McIntire Stennis grant from the Natural Resources Management Department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and in cooperation with the Los Padres National Forest. The final results of this CEA will be available by April, 1989 from the authors. 30 USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-109. 1989