AoR 52: Fire Risk Reduction Through Grazing -- UC-Davis Research Roundtable

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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I'm your host Tip Hudson, Range and Livestock Specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com. Welcome to The Art of Range. We're going to talk today about some current research on wildfire in grazing in California, but it will be a panel discussion. And I don't know some of the interviewees very well, so we're going to do introductions first, and I'll let each person introduce themselves, and then we'll get on to talking about their research. My initial contact was with Devii Rao, Extension Specialist in San Benito County. Devii, welcome.

>> Thanks so much, Tip. It's really great to be with you today. Yeah, so my name is Devii Rao. I am a Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension. I work on California Central Coast in San Benito, Monterey, and Santa Cruz counties.

>> Welcome. We also have Felix Radcliffe. Felix, you're a consultant that's been on this project, right?

>> Yeah, that's right. Thanks for having me here today. I'm a consultant. I work out of the Bay Area, but all over sort of Northern California principally. And I work for a company called LD Ford Consultants and Rangeland Conservation Science. Principally, we do a lot of rangeland planning work, and also specialized studies such as the one that we're going to talk about today.

>> Great, thank you. Sheila Berry. Sheila, we've known each other for some time, but haven't done much work together. Welcome.

>> Yeah. Thank you, Tip. Hi, this is Sheila Berry, and I'm a Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I cover Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Mateo Counties.

>> Great, glad to have you. Well, we've had a number of discussions on the podcast about wildfire in grazing. But this is a pretty rich topic, and one that is especially relevant seems every year. The relationship between grazing and fire is complex. And the national conversation about using livestock grazing as a control measure is pretty controversial. I think wildfire in general, is a difficult topic, for a number of reasons. One, there's altered plant communities have oftentimes higher fire potential. There's a recognition that periodic fire is probably necessary in fire adapted plant communities. The economic consequences of catastrophic wildfire in terms of suppression costs and direct property damage are really serious. We could, we could go. On avoiding property damage is pretty important. And using fire to fight fire, to create fire resistant or fire resilient plant communities is also really important, I think because it reduces the likelihood of mega fires. But there are also plenty of people who would love it, who would like to just let wildfire happen where it will, and accept the economic consequences of a sort of a giant reset. It would seem that we're experiencing some of that reset already. And that is pretty expensive. So at the risk of sounding like a broken record here, I think there's a huge need to identify ways to reduce fire risk in a way that is economically palatable. And I guess I'd say ecologically effective. Grazing is a more controllable tool than prescribed fire, but maybe has different results than prescribed fire. And of course, it's much cheaper than either chemical or mechanical treatments if we're talking about acreage of any size. So I think there's some simple concepts that that are real, and they're obvious, most notably, that grazing reduces both the amount of fine fuel and the continuity of fine fuel. But, but then it starts to get more complex from there because we can't just graze everything to the ground and, and call it good. That has other negative ecological consequences. So you guys have been doing some research in California, trying to find where that sweet spot is in the middle where we graze enough that it makes a difference in truly reducing the fire risk, or reducing some of the effects of fire once a fire does start, but also trying to avoid the negative consequences of, you know, sort of a scorched earth policy. So I became aware of this, because there your study was in the news, and it made it at least regionally if not nationally, out to the, to the public. And you guys can choose whoever you want to start off with, but can you describe what the recent study was that made it into the news and, and what the, the genesis for that project was?

>> Sure, I'll start and then the rest of the gang can sort of jump in. But this project started for in my mind, when I got, when I received an email from a local rancher who asked the question, you know, when--. It was during, you know, these catastrophic wildfires. We'd already had a few years of wildfires here in California, and they've been impacting so many different people. And this Ranger was asking when is someone going to publish a paper showing how much fine fuels or from the ranching perspective how much forage cattle and other livestock are consuming? Each year in California, this is really important. We should recognize that there's a service that's happening by cattle each year in California, and you know, someone should look at this question. And somebody else on the email said, "Well, this sounds like something UC should look into," you know, University of California Cooperative Extension should look into, and he had included me on that email. And I said, "Well, I'm the UC person, I guess I better get on this." And so I started reaching out to different people to, you know, see who might be interested in collaborating with me on this kind of project. And somebody on that same email chain suggested the California Cattle Council, which is a newly formed organization, and they were just starting to fund some research projects. And so I was, I feel so lucky to have found everybody on our research team. Our research team started out with just a few people, it started out with Luke and Sheila and Felix, and it expanded to ten people. So in the end, we ended up having ten coauthors on a paper that we submitted. But yeah, we just thought, well, this is an interesting question this rancher asked, and the more and more we got into it, the more and more interesting we thought the question was, so. So we were able to get the grant from the California Cattle Council to specifically look at that question, what, you know, how much fine fuels are cattle consuming across, you know, California each year? And then, in addition to that, we wanted to know, not only how much are they consuming, but what is the influence of that on fire behavior? And so, we found that, you know, in a nutshell, the results were that we use 2017 data, and I'll maybe ask Felix and Sheila to talk a little bit more about our data sources. But we based on several different data sources, we found that cattle were consuming 11.6 billion pounds of fuel in California in 2017, across a little more than 19 million acres of grazed rangeland. So that was the sort of basic, you know, answer to that question that the rancher asked. And we looked at it on a regional level. So we lumped different counties in California, instead of giving a number of how much are cattle consuming per acre in every county, we thought, well, cattle are moving between some counties in California. In other areas, they're not like on the Central Coast where I live. For the most part, cattle are just on the same ranch year-round. But in other parts of California, they're moving from the Central Valley up into the foothills and things like that. So we wanted to account for some of these potential cattle movements. So we grouped sort of counties regionally to come up with, you know, how much are cattle consuming in different regions, and we found that on average, cattle are consuming about 596 pounds per acre of fuel. And that really ranges from a low of about 175 pounds per acre that they're consuming to a high of a little over 1000 pounds per acre. And so, so that was sort of the grazing result. And then we wanted to look at the influence on fire behavior. So we worked with a couple of fire modelers out of UC Santa Barbara, and they basically took several different things into account, and we can get into more detail later. But the sort of essential result that they came out with based on their modeling was that--. Let me back up a second here. One thing that's really important that firefighters talk about is flame length. And, and that really influences how firefighters can get in and fight a fire. So they talk about if you can maintain a flame length of four feet high or less, then firefighters, firefighters can get in on the ground with hand tools to fight a fire. They won't need, you know, heavy equipment, they won't need helicopters. It sort of really reduces the level of effort that they need. And so we wanted to know well, what would it take to maintain? How much biomass on the ground would it take to maintain a four-foot flame length? And our, the modelers that we worked with came up with well, in the spring and summertime, it would need to graze down to about 1200 to 1300 pounds per acre to maintain that four-foot flame length. And again, I just want to reiterate that that's a modeling result, not based on the ground studies. So I think that would be the next step to see okay, well, this is what we think. Let's test it out on the ground and see what we find. So in a nutshell, those are the results of the study. But there's a lot more we can get into about how we got to those results. And how those results can be used. So I would like to invite anyone, you know, my collaborators to go into any more detail on some of that stuff.

>> Yeah, I'd be happy to jump in here. This is Felix. And I think that was a really great overview of the genesis and the overall sort of, I guess, direction of this study. And so a couple things I would just like to mention from the top. One is that this studies in peer review right now, so it hasn't been published yet. And so there could be some minor alterations that come through the peer review process. And although we don't particularly expect big ones, nor do we hope for them, but we will, we'll see how that all comes out. It's just good to bear that in mind. And so I'd like to chime in a little bit about data sources, because part of the challenge of this project is, you know, there's a lot of data sets that sort of come to bear on the question of really how many range cattle are grazing? What kind of cattle are they? How long are they on range in California? And how much forage do we think they're consuming as a result of all those factors, right? We also have other data sets, which are totally relevant to this discussion, like how much forage is produced in different parts of the state. And that's highly variable in California. And so there's a lot of good information on all those fronts. But you know, some of these data sets occur at different sort of like spatial resolutions or in different regions. And putting them together was really one of the main sort of challenges of this project. And I think it ended up coming out pretty well, but there were some really interesting sort of conversations we had about how to marry up some of these datasets and make them work together. But the primary ones that we use, when determining the sort of, you know, how many, the how many, the who, and the how many have great grazing cattle and on range in California, was principally the 2017 agricultural census. That's the USDA census, which the reason that we use 2017 is because that's the most recent agricultural census in California, or I guess, across the nation. And that document is fantastic. It gives us information about how many beef cows, specifically cows, are in range in California, how many dairy cows are in the state, and then also this other, unfortunately, somewhat more nebulous category called "other cattle." And other cattle could basically include all non-cow cattle, whether they are beef, or dairy cows, and so it really confounds the picture. In California, the vast majority of cattle that are grazing our rangelands are beef, beef, cattle, and so we were pretty principally really interested in that fraction of the total cattle from the census until that other cat, that other cattle category really sort of posed a problem for us. But thankfully, Sheila has done a huge amount of work with the brand inspection data that has been taken in the state. Maybe she'll chime in a little bit about that as well. But California does have a brand inspection program which basically inspects cattle every time they are sold or transferred out of state. And because of this, these, this brand inspection not only has incredible detailed information about where these cattle were inspected and things like that, but it also has information about what kind of cattle they are. You can derive based on the breeds, you can derive whether they're dairy cow or a beef cow, and also, you can infer a lot in terms of what class of cattle they are. Are they a cow? Are they steer? Are they a heifer? Are they a bull, et cetera. And so, so we're able with this, the brand data, to actually sort of break up that other cattle category into which ones we think are beef cattle, and which ones we think are dairy cattle. And not only that, we're further able to break it up into what class we think each one of those cattle are. And the reason that that was important for our study is that different classes of cattle are going to consume different amounts of forage. And so we would calculate those animal use, sorry, animal unit equivalents differently depending on the class. And so the combination of those two data sets basically gave us a pretty good picture of, on a county by county basis, how many cattle were out there and what class they were, what class of beef cattle they were. And we use that really as the sort of fundamental unit, I guess, of figuring out how much forage was consumed, because then we use animal unit equivalence to figure out well how much forage do we think each one of these cattle classes is consuming in each one of these counties? And beyond that, how long do we think they were on range? And again, that's where the, that's where the brand inspection data came in really handy, because we had a bunch of information about sale dates for each class of cattle as well for each county, and that varied by county and varied by region. And ultimately, like Devii said, because of intercounty transfers of cattle, we ended up having to instead of giving a county-by-county analysis of the total forage removed, with a total fuel removed, if you want to think of it that way. We had to sort of lump these into regions that we sort of elucidated through a process talking with a lot of other livestock and natural resource advisors through ANR about intercounty transfers of cattle. We had to lump them into these regions that had a lot of movement between them so that we felt like these numbers are fairly accurate and fairly representative of the region and weren't missing a big picture due to say, when the census was evaluated, or what county animals reported on, if they're at multicounty operations. Yeah, but so that was the, that was the basics of how we came up with the number of well how much forage is removed, and ultimately got to that number of about 11.6 billion pounds of forage removed across the state. And, you know, what our study showed was, this was highly variable by region. And you know, Devii mentioned this, and one thing to note is that, you know, the region, the region with the lowest amount of forage removal per grazed acre was basically the southeast part of the state. That's, that's like the Mojave Desert, portions of the Great Basin Desert, Sonoran Desert, all lumped up together in like a desert region for the state. And so this is an area with much lower forage production. So it makes perfect sense that there's going to be a lot less forage removal from the grazed acres there. And it's also an area that typically we don't see as many of these catastrophic fires that we see in other portions of the state. They seem to be much more frequent in some of these other areas with more developed forests, because of course, that's part of the fire picture, but also much more productive rangelands. I don't know, Sheila, if you want to jump in and talk about datasets at all, as well. Probably have something to add to all that.

>> I think you, Felix, covered the data sets very well. I would add that I think that an important thing to consider is you know why, why would, why is there an interest in even trying to figure out how much forage is being consumed by cattle? And I think that comes back to this, the current discussion often around managing fire fuels and reducing fire fuels for with grazing often comes down to discussions on targeted grazing or prescribed grazing. And often that is thought of as animals, small, small ruminants, sheep and goats. And those are the ones that might be employed in sort of more mob grazing or in large, intensive, in larger numbers in smaller groups to reduce fire fuel loads over a short period of time. And I think, well, and part of what this study then goes to show is that across the state, we have grazing occurring. It occurs in every county in the state, and that is something that showed up in our brand inspection data is that we have, you know, cattle grazing occurring throughout the state in every county except actually San Francisco. So it's widely, it's widely used, and it is providing some level of fuels reduction. And then the next sort of question that we can begin to ask and think about from this study is can, could it be more directed to reduce and be more targeted to reduce fuel loads, find fuel loads, where we have more property at risk or more opportunity for there to be catastrophic wildfire, or, you know, next to the urban interface, for example? So I think that's what this study, you know, begins to help us understand is one, that we have this, you know, it's occurring throughout the state with the removal of a lot of fuel with cattle grazing in particular, but there are opportunities for it to be more targeted. Where we find, where we, where we have areas that are at risk.

>> And remind me, did the study connect the amount of grazing in a geographic area with known fire incidents, or fire conditions?

>> So this is Felix, again. We didn't directly assess that. That's, it turns out that that's a pretty tricky thing to assess, partly because within a region, you, you know, you would ideally, to make that assessment know, sort of the footprint of grazing within that region, and those maps don't exist for California. You can piece them together for regions of the state. But it's difficult to do a statewide analysis. But one of the things that we did, and this relates to Sheila's comment as well, one of the things that we did is that, you know, these numbers that we got, there were sort of like you get one number for a region, right? So you'd say, say in the Central Coast, maybe four or 500 pounds per acre were removed, you know, on average, across that entire region. Right? And we were curious, well, you know, something we know as people who've been involved in range management is that grazing is not necessarily a homogenous process, right. And the removal of forage as a result is not going to be a homogenous process. So we delved into a bunch of datasets that were residual dry matter, or RDM datasets, looking at the amount of residual forage left, essentially, at the end of the grazing season, or what we think of as sort of the beginning of the next growing season in the fall. And what those datasets showed was even within a region, right, let's just use the Central Coast, we had a very, you know, robust data set from the Central Coast that spanned 43 different properties, and, you know, tons of sampling points. And you know, what, what these datasets showed is that even within a region, right, say, the Central Coast, and even within ranches, you can have highly variable amounts of residual dry matter, right? And that might be a function, not only how much grazing occurred there, but also of variable production due to you know, different soil or topographic processes, but also due to regions at very fine scales in the state, you know, going from the coast over, say, the Coast Range, and then into the Central Valley, you have a huge gradient in production. And all this, of course, is over the backdrop of just tons of variation between years in the amount of forage production. California is just sort of notorious for this. And but the thing that I wanted to emphasize is these results that show how variable the amount of residual dry matter are, it sort of highlights maybe one flaw to the way of thinking like, you can't just, you can't just assume that a region-wide number tells you how well you've dealt with the, you know, the risk of fire in an area, because really, the question comes down to well, how is that managed at the at the ranch scale? Or at the sub regional scale? Maybe if you're managing a park district that might be at that district scale, right? And that's a really complex question, because it you know, it bears on some of the things that Sheila just brought up in terms of well, what's the proximity to urban areas? Are, you know, can we manage areas that are fire prone, either because of higher, you know, chance of ignition, or, or because of adjacent fuels, or areas that just have a higher hazard and higher potential to become, or to sort of fuel catastrophic fires due to proximity to urban centers and things like that? How do we plan, you know, how do we plan for fuels reduction in this really dynamic sort of context? And, you know, the region-wide member gives us an indication that yeah, you know, the grazing, the ability to graze these areas is there, right? I mean, it's really important to demonstrate that, I think, but the actual way that this rolls out is, is really a sort of planning. It's a really sort of complex planning issue. And it's a strategic issue. And I think the strategic implementation of grazing is going to be ultimately what really defines it as a, as a very useful tool for reducing fire hazard across the landscape.

>> That's interesting. I was reminded of some writing that I ran across a little while ago in doing a little bit of literature review on grazing and fire. My old [inaudible], he worked for the Forest Service back in the 1920s. And at a fairly well-known conference, I think on fire protection at the time, he proposed to the Forest Service, that this is a quote, "There are areas on the national forests of high fire hazard, where this hazard can be greatly reduced through grazing." You know, that was just about exactly 100 years ago. And, you know, it's kind of the still kind of the same issues. He also said, "Destructive grazing is not usually required to accomplish the desired purpose. Due regard may therefore be given, so as to furnish continuous annual range and stable grazing." It's sometimes so there's nothing new under the sun. And that's certainly the case with fire. You know, we think we have increased wildfire risk right now. I think there probably is some increase in risk, but I think it's the economic damage from even if we experienced fire with any kind of historical fire return interval, with the amount of, you know, human occupation, as it were previously wild landscapes, there's going to be a fair bit of damage. And so it seems like anything like this that can be done, that is going to reduce either the areal extent of fire, or fire severity, can be pretty useful. I can't remember whether you've used the term yet. But in your, in your study, you talked about residual dry matter and establishing an upper threshold of residual dry matter as a goal. And we're accustomed to thinking about, you know, a minimum threshold. In other words, we're accustomed to thinking of, say, a stubble height, or a lower level of residual dry matter as a trigger for removing grazing animals from an area. But you guys are proposing using residual dry matter and upper level as a goal. In other words, you wouldn't stop grazing until you reached this level of pounds per acre dry matter, you know, remaining. Can you talk more about that?

>> I'll jump a little in about that a little bit. So, you know, like I had mentioned the work that we did, where we sort of came up with the 12 to 1300 pounds per acre as the amount of biomass that would be needed to safely, for firefighters to safely come in and fight a fire from the ground. You know, that still needs to be tested. So I don't think we want to be talking about the sort of maximum RPM for fire safety at this point. In terms of a policy perspective, I think more work needs to be done before any sort of actual recommendation is made. But I think it is important to start having those conversations. You know, what would that look like? What would the maximum RDM be? Would it be different depending on region, you know? With the minimum RDM standards, it's different depending on the amount of rainfall you have, the amount of woody vegetation cover you have, and your slope. And so, you know, it's in many ways very site specific, what the RDN for your area is going to be. So, you know, I think that's would need to be part of the conversation. If we do start talking about well, what should our maximum, should we have maximum potential diameter levels for fire safety? And what should they be? And should it be different by region? And I think one example of sort of a challenge with that concept is in coastal prairie sites in California, for example. The minimum residual dry matter for sites with less than 25% woody cover and with slopes of more than 10%, the minimum RDM recommendation is 1200 pounds per acre. But if our modeling numbers of you know 12 to 1300 pounds are accurate, you know that might be an issue because you might have two different goals. You might have sort of the you know, minimizing soil erosion goal, and then the minimizing fire hazard goal. And to achieve those two goals, you might need to have more or less residual dry matter and so how do we make achieving both of those goals compatible? And I think that's going to be a really important and interesting conversation we're going to need to have as we start thinking more about, well, you know, do we need to have these residual dry matter maximums for fire safety?

>> Yeah. So you're saying what, that what we would probably call light to moderate grazing may not remove enough fuel in order for that particular site to be fire resistant? Is that right?

>> Exactly, yeah, depending on the situation. You know, on the Central Coast they have very high forage production. I think, you know, in some areas, sites might have more than, you know, 4500 pounds per acre produced in a year. And so in order to, you know, get that down low enough to, you know, prevent those flame links getting above four feet, that that could be a challenge just to do at all. And then also it might not be, it might be in conflict with some of these other conservation goals. But I think it's something that we can work out, it's just we need to start that conversation.

>> Yeah, no, that that's really interesting. One other question, how would you contrast, or compare and contrast the results of grazing for fire reduction, fire risk reduction, versus prescribed fire for fire risk reduction? I mean, there's the obvious things. The fire tends to take out all of the plants a little bit less, more indiscriminately than grazing does, and in particular, is prone to take out shrubs if there's any kind of a shrub community with canopy cover close enough for it to catch. But how else would you compare and contrast the effects of grazing versus the effects of fire in terms of risk reduction?

>> This is Sheila. I guess I'd like to start with one of the things that I think is often missed when considering prescribed fire versus grazing is prescribed fire is going to be a one, a one, a moment in time. And grazing occurs throughout the year. And so we have this, you know, so all along the year, you're going to be reducing your, your fuel loads, you're going to be managing vegetation. And that also makes a difference for other species that are using that site. So if we're trying to manage vegetation to improve the site or improve habitat for other species, grazing is also different in that way than prescribed fire, which is, you know, going to be, you know, occur on a given day, or maybe a couple days, but you know at a given time, and also generally won't be able to happen year after year. So, you could do a prescribed fire. And that may be very good for reducing brush, which will have some sort of more longer-term effect, but for controlling annual grass growth, and particularly annual plants, there is a quite a difference in the ability to use fire from year to year and use grazing from year to year. So they're, they might better go hand in hand in many cases than being something that you look at as, as an alternative to one another. It depends on the type of fuels that you're trying to control, and the timing in which you need them controlled and other needs for the site.

>> Yeah, and I'm just thinking out loud here. Economically, prescribed fire is going to be a significant cost that doesn't have any corresponding revenue necessarily. Where grazing you at least receive, you receive some benefit back from that.

>> In terms of the cost with prescribed fire, you know, in California, we are starting to develop some of these prescribed burn associations, which are similar to the old range improvement associations that ranchers had been involved with for many years, until that they stopped, sort of started slowing down, I think, because of challenges getting permits and things like that to burn. But we are starting to develop more of these prescribed burn associations, which is basically community burning where people, basically people helping people do burns on their properties. And I think as that becomes more viable, as we get more prescribed burns, burn associations across the state, that could be a more viable and less expensive option than it has been in the past for prescribed burning, which again, I agree with what Sheila was saying is that I think thinking about prescribed burning and prescribed grazing sort of together is a really good idea because they can, in some ways, help achieve the same goals. But they can also help achieve different goals at different sort of timelines. But the great tools to use in combination.

>> Actually you just segued really nicely. Thank you, Devii, because I wanted to talk about the different timelines. And one thing that we discussed in our paper and is really, I think, relevant to this discussion, just in general, although we didn't really directly assess this is the different questions as sort of what are the impacts of cattle grazing on the landscape when viewed at different timelines? We talked, you know, really solely about fine fuels. Right? And those are in California, in particular, we're really talking when we talk about fine fuels, we're talking about annual grasses, you know, predominantly, really, we're talking about non-native annual grasses, which are the basis of most of our forage production, but also most of our fine fuel production. And, and that's what you know, that's what we analyze and sort of think in terms of thinking about what how much fine fuel reduction or how much fuel reduction is, you know, can we, can we credit rangeland cattle grazing with? But there's another component to this, which is a longer term, right, a longer-term component. And that's the in many parts of California, and it certainly this is true in some of the coastal areas of the state. Areas that are not grazed by livestock and also are not burned, typically have a lot of encroachment of shrubs into grassland areas. And so livestock grazing and cattle grazing is, is known to be one management practice that people can do to keep shrubs from encroaching into grasslands. And that has huge implications for fuels. And it has a lot of other implications, too, in terms of, you know, carbon, carbon storage and things like that. But it's a really important part of this picture in terms of thinking about firesafe landscapes. Because the shrubland is, you know, can potentially produce much more fuels and a whole completely different kind of, you know, fire intensity and fire behavior than you would expect to see on most grasslands. So that's an important part of the picture that I think relates to burning and relates to thinking about, you know, how do we think about the short term versus long term effects of cattle grazing in rangelands?

>> In much of the West, lighting off your own property is pretty risky no matter what time of year it is. What is the, what does the liability look like for that in California?

>> I'm not sure that there's any of us have our sort of expert yet under fully understanding sort of the liability in terms of California and fire, but my understanding is they're sort of in different states, there's different levels of liability, and where, you know, if you do your due diligence, then you're not going to be liable for anything versus, you know, even if you've done your due diligence, and some, you know, something happens with your prescribed burn, and it gets out like no matter what, you're liable. And my understanding is that California is sort of in the middle of those two extremes. And so liability, you know, and talking about prescribed burning in California, you know, here on the Central Coast, in San Benito, Monterey, and Santa Cruz counties, we're just starting to develop our prescribed burn association. And that is one of the questions. You know, when you start talking to people about prescribed burning, that's the first question that comes up is like, well, what about liability? And how, how's that going to affect me, you know? I'm interested in burning, but, you know, I don't want to be liable if something gets out. And so I think some of the things that people are doing to address that are making sure people have good training before they participate in some of these collaborative burns. And another thing that you can do is hire a burn boss who is trained that has a lot of experience with prescribed burning. So some of these burn bosses come with their own liability insurance up to some, I'm not sure you know what it is, but there's you know it's up to some amount it's covered. And, and I think there's new, a lot of new legislation in California, that is coming out related to prescribed burning to make it easier to burn and to make it so Cal Fire can now work with people who are doing collaborative burns. I know historically, Cal Fire could maybe attend a prescribed burn but couldn't actually participate unless the burn basically got out of control, and then they would come in and put it out. But I think there's new legislation that's coming into play that's going to allow Cal Fire to participate in a more integral fashion in some of these prescribed burns. So I think that's going to as we all sort of start learning together how to do these collaborative burns, I think there's going to, you know, there's a lot of safety built into that. And as long as you're doing your due diligence, for example, writing actually a burn plan, and submitting that to Cal Fire to get your permit. You have to get a permit from Cal Fire if you are burning during burn season. If you're not burning during burn season, my understanding is that you don't have to get a permit from Cal Fire. But you still have to get a permit no matter what, from the Air Board. So if you have a plan that helps to show that you've done your due diligence in terms of any issues with the fire getting out, but that is definitely a big concern for people and something that we are working to try to better understand and figure out ways to mitigate those issues.

>> Now, that makes a lot of sense. What you're describing sounds like a crossover between prescribed burn associations, and what are called in other places, rural fire protection associations, and my understanding of those that they're typically set up to allow local landowners to train with and get certified to fight fire so that, you know, when, when a fire takes off, it's not illegal for them to engage in fighting fire on their own property. And they're working in cooperation with, you know, Forest Service, state, or, you know, BLM fire teams. It seems like one of the potential benefits of participating in a prescribed burn association is if your participation and using an approved prescribed burn plan would grant you some immunity from liability, that would be huge. You know, and in Washington State, for example, if you, if you light a fire on your property and escapes, then you're liable for the fire suppression costs of the public land adjacent to you, private land adjacent to you. And of course, for most people, that's totally prohibitive. Like that's the end of the ranch. You're going to have to sell out in order to pay that bill. And so people just don't do it. But if that was a, if that was a feature of participation in a prescribed burn association, that would have tremendous value.

>> Definitely. And this is such a hot topic right now. And I wish I was sort of more of an expert on that sort of implications and liability and all that. But if you want to do an episode on this topic, you should talk to [inaudible] Quinn Davidson and Jeff Stackhouse. They would be great.

>> No, that's a good idea. I sense that, you know, all over the West, there's significant interest in reintroducing fire into landscapes that haven't had it. You know, and again, that's not new. There was, you know, there was a guy in Idaho in the 1930s, who discovered doing good research that cattle gain more weight when they were grazing burned range than when they were on range that had not had fire in many, many decades. Just because of forage quality and availability. I believe I remember correctly that he got fired, this was a guy named Green. I think he got fired for publishing that research because it was antagonistic toward the Forest Service goal of, of not burning anything to protect, you know, board feet of timber. So they're, you know, the idea of improving range using fire is not new, but it is a little trickier now, because of that wildland urban interface.

>> Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, kind of bringing it back to the research at hand. Thinking about well, how, you know, the research that we did trying to understand how much fuel are livestock consuming? How does that influence fire behavior? I think, thinking about, well, how can we use that research? And how can that help us in terms of future planning? I think there are a lot of areas in California that, you know, a lot of communities in California that have rangeland that maybe currently isn't being grazed. And there's also currently no prescribed burning going on in those areas. So there's a lot of buildup of thatch, a lot of buildup of vegetation. I think the work we did on this project can help maybe land management agencies that currently aren't doing any grazing or aren't doing any vegetation management, it can help them think about okay, well, you know, where are we situated in California? Do we have a lot of tall, thick grass? Do we have a lot of forage production every year? Are we, you know, at the wildland urban interface, are there you know, suburbs, you know, right across the street from our areas and you know, if they're in that kind of situation, then you know, maybe looking at our research can help them start to think about, okay well is using grazing as a tool to reduce these fire fuels is something we should consider. I think there are a lot of opportunities across the state for agencies that currently are not grazing or are grazing, just you know, very little to think about how can we use grazing in a targeted way? You know, to start making our communities safer?

>> Yeah, speaking of ways to reduce that risk and make communities safer, I have a kind of a wild question that you're free to say you don't know. But in, in visiting California, a couple years ago, there was a tour, the SRM had a tour at the Foothills Research and Extension Center. And I think it was Ken Tate who was saying there have been a number of efforts to try to convert that annual grassland back to perennials. And it's been spectacularly unsuccessful. There's, there was some research in Oregon at the Burns Research Station where they found that grazing plus prescribed fire resulted in much, much greater control over invasive annual grass using herbicide. So with those three methods, together, they got dramatically higher control of invasive annual grass using herbicide. And that then facilitated a much more rapid conversion back to perennials. Do you think there's any chance of converting some of these transition zones back to perennial grassland? Because that would pretty significantly reduce fire risk as well.

>> I think probably everyone on this call has opinions about that, right? I think, you know, in California, it's such a comp, this is a very complicated question you're asking, I think, and the vegetation in California has changed so dramatically over the last few hundred years. We don't really know what the vegetation was, like, you know, sort of before Europeans arrived. There's different hypotheses, there's the hypothesis that it was just, you know, the grasslands were dense, native perennial grasses, with the [inaudible] all over the place. And there's other hypotheses, you know, maybe more recently, where well, maybe we shouldn't even call them grasslands. Maybe they were actually [inaudible] where they were matted with all of these native annual forbs. They were much more dominant. And then the native perennial grasses were sort of patchy in the sort of spaces in between the forbs. And, you know, maybe the percent cover of native grasses that we have today, maybe that's pretty similar to what it was before, you know, historically? But instead of having all the non-native annual grasses, it would have been forbs. So it's, you know, even knowing what our vegetation was like, historically, it's hard to know. So, you know, could we get it back to that point? Well, what was that point to begin with is a question. And it seems like many people have tried to do a lot of restoration back to perennials. And it seems like it's very challenging. I think, in a lot of places probably that seed bank of native perennial grasses is gone. So even if you're doing, you know, herbicide, and burning and grazing to reduce, you know, the worst weeds, I don't and that can be effective to reduce some of those weeds. But I don't know that that means that you're going to bring back a landscape of widespread native perennial grasses. In some situations, you can probably increase the percent cover, but I don't know, based on the reading that I've done, it doesn't seem likely that we're going to get back to some sort of, you know, large scale, dense, native perennial grassland. But I'd be curious to hear what the other folks on the panel think about that question.

>> Sure, that if I could interrupt just before Felix or Sheila responds, I didn't mean to insinuate that, that it's a given that the goal would be to get back to some unknown, you know, pre-Columbian, ecological Nirvana. More just, you know, is there, instead of what was maybe thinking about what could be and I realized, saying what could be presupposes that what's there right now is not desirable, and that might may not be the case. It may just be that, you know, we have annual grasslands with some forbs and shrubs. And that's what we managed for. But in in many places it would converting to perennials would result in a longer period of active plant growth and a shorter fire season. Again, assuming that those plants are, are actively growing for a longer percentage of the growing season, and that is the case, you know, in much of the rest of the Intermountain West and the Great Basin, where you have perennials, you have a larger percentage of the year where fuel moisture is low. And so there's a little bit less fire risk, and typically, you know, more production. So I don't want to impose a bunch of assumptions on the question. I was just curious, you know, whether there has been any attempt to do something different, even if different isn't returning to some imagined, you know, pre-European condition.

>> Tip, I would add to that, that, yeah, our modeling, in our modeling, we did you know, show the reduced risk of flame length with higher moisture in the, in the fuels and just yeah, reduce fire risk. So I think that's a, that is an important point. However, in regards to California's climate, at least into our annual grasslands and our Mediterranean climate, our fire season we consider it starting in October. So if we were to lengthen the green season with perennials, it's not clear that that's the part where we would gain, where we'd actually gain. So yeah, I'm not sure that gets us where we do, where we would provide any advantage, even if we were able to do it, which seems, as Devii said, really unlikely.

>> I just, I can't help but chime in. Like Devii said, everybody has an opinion on this in California, about the pre-Columbian flora. And I'm actually not going to chime in on that. But I did want to say that in terms of, you know, restoration using these various tools, be it grazing, burning or herbicides for restoration. I mean, I think all of them probably have promise for targeted activities. And I think there's been research showing certainly the effects of all these various things. I'm less familiar with, say that, you know, prescribed burning objectives might be, although I will say that, you know, I know that burning, for example, has been shown to be extremely effective in controlling some of our most terrible wheat species like Medusa head. And so for targeted outcomes, in particular for controlling wheat species, I think that there's a lot of promise, in terms of, you know, eliciting a certain response from the flora. I think that's more challenging. And it's, it's sort of doubly challenging in California, because, you know, some past studies in California that have done like mulch, manipulation, doing, basically clipping the different levels and things like that have basically shown that, like, between regional differences and climate differences between year you know, in particular, we're talking about annual rainfall, and differences in annual rainfall, which is so highly variable in California from year to year. You know, those two, those two factors, basically, you know, spatial differences like soils, and climate differences, like precipitation, and the amount of precipitation on an annual basis, are really what seems to control the vast majority of species composition within a given year. And so, you know, the signal of I mean, I don't doubt that certainly something like fire and herbicides, you know, targeted herbicide use, or grazing can have an effect. But often that effect can get swamped in this sort of the background noise that is California. You know, California is just ecologically a very noisy place because of this background variation, both spatially and really importantly, temporarily, in terms of, you know, these annual rainfall events that are very hard to predict from one year to the next, and make it so it's just it's difficult to predict what the outcomes of a management action might be in the in the following year.

>> Mm hmm. I'm curious because this is a relatively controversial topic. How has your work been received? What's been the response to this research project? And I realize it's not finally published yet, but it's, it's been out there for the world to see a little bit.

>> Well, so I, the responses that I've had were more from people who are excited about it. I think maybe people who just haven't been reached out to by others, so I think people are excited that--. We're starting to ask these kinds of questions. And, you know, some of the results and what we said, you know, what could be used for is to help ranchers strategize about how to use grazing for fire safety to help the general public really understand what is the public safety service that grazing provides for our community. And to sort of help agencies think about whether grazing might be a tool that they want to consider. And so I think it is, you know, grazing can be a controversial topic, but I think, you know, put in the context, it helps people understand what some of the benefits are. And I think that it's, you know, we also, I don't think so much in the blog article or the news, sort of the popular press articles we put out, but definitely, certainly in the preview publication that we submitted that will hopefully get accepted. You know, we talked in there about not just the benefit of grazing for fuels reduction, but the benefit of grazing for species conservation. And I think when people can understand that livestock grazing, when, when done in a, you know, specific targeted way can achieve fire safety goals, can achieve habitat conservation goals, and can you know, help with the economic viability of ranching in California, I think it's sort of a triple win. And I think our research highlights that. And so I think a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life can see the value in that. So what I've seen so far has been positive. I'm not sure if any of the other collaborators have seen some more, maybe not as positive responses.

>> No, I've only seen positive responses, like you're, you're discussing as well. I think that, you know, by and large, when it comes down to it, people really recognize that fire is, is just an enormous threat in California and throughout the West, and any tools, I mean, I you know, I just I think people really sincerely hope that we can figure out any and all tools to really reduce fire risk and lower, lower the risk to communities, lower the risk that it poses ecologically in some areas. And, and I think that, I think that there's a lot of just community buy in for the concept of tools, you know, people like the idea of tools. And certainly the way like Devii said, the way that we present this is really as a tool to be used in one's toolbox. And to be incorporated in planning, along with other conservation goals that really can hopefully be achieved. And in many cases, where grazing might be very necessary to help achieve some of these other conservation goals. So we present this more sort of as, as something to be strategically implemented. And I think that there's a lot of support for that concept.

>> I would just add that I do recall, Devii, that you got one comment from a rancher who was concerned or I don't know, if maybe concern's not the right word, but was pointing out that we hadn't really proven anything or shown anything that wasn't already known. That, you know, well, of course, cattle are grazing and consuming lots of fuel. And that would have a reduction in, in fire, you know, impacts. But even though it does seem, you know, for those who are grazing, it might seem very obvious, I do think that, you know, we didn't have any information about sort of the, at least quantifiable information about the extent of it, or the and the amounts of it. And, and also, I think that there's a growing lack of understanding about the beef cattle production system all together. That, you know, there's just not a lot of clarity when people hear about beef coming from feed yards and so forth, that those animals, almost all of them begin their life out on rangeland and are grazing and, you know, that has some impacts. It has some impacts in terms of how it manages and controls vegetation.

>> Yeah, just one final comment on what you said about this being something that we already know. I think that probably is true in many cases; however, it's also true that one of the, one of the goals of the scientific method is that, you know, not only can research be replicated, but it should be replicated to see whether or not we get the same or different results. And so, you know, if, if more work like this does get done, and it consistently comes up with the same results, that definitely strengthens that finding. And, you know, granted more legitimacy, more weight in the public sphere. So, I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusions, and I appreciate what you guys are doing. And I want to thank you for your time. If listeners are interested in learning more about this study, is there a place people can go to learn more about the research and the results?

>> Well, they can contact me at my email address, which is Drorao@ucanr.edu. That's a mouthful. So I'll say it one more time. Drorao@ucanr.edu. So yeah, give me a call or send me an email, and I'm happy to share more information.

>> Devii, Sheila, Felix and Luke, who had to drop off the call, I appreciate you joining me today. And thank you for your time.

>> Thank you so much, Tip.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

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