REFLECTIONS ON A TRAGEDY A LOOK AT THE PROGRESS TWO YEARS POST-FIRE by Past CCA President Dave Daley
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is a follow-up to the oneyear progress and initial aftermath accounts of the Bear Fire that occurred in the fall of 2020. Those articles appeared in the November 2020 and November 2021 issues of the California Cattleman. The North Complex Fire, which included the Bear Fire, started Aug. 17, 2020 and burned until Dec. 3, 2020. Today it remains California's sixth largest wildfire in modern history and the deadliest of 2020. With wildfire being a constant issue of concern for CCA's legislative and regulatory affairs efforts, the author has made his own family's ranching tragedy an opportunity to push for change with lawmakers and public lands officials. _________________________
Two years ago to the day I received a call that the Bear Fire (part of the North Complex Fire) had jumped the Middle Fork of the Feather River and was tearing through our cattle range, between La Porte and Feather Falls heading towards Oroville. I will never forget that day or the weeks that followed. Everything destroyed. Sixteen people killed in the town of Berry Creek and the entire little town obliterated. The community of Feather Falls was destroyed. Hundreds of our cows, all the wildlife and the incredible ecosystem above Lake Oroville were completely erased. Forever. I have visited other post-fire landscapes throughout California (those scarred by the Dixie, Thomas, Creek, Caldor fires and others). Those fires were horrific, but I have never seen anything of the intensity of the Bear Fire. Literally nothing alive. Steep terrain, winds that exceeded hundred-mile gusts at times, massive fuel loads...and the devastation was complete. There were areas where the burnt pine needles were literally at right angles from the tree –charred in place by the incredible winds. So, what has changed in two years? There has been some progress in the discussion to reduce fuel loads through prescribed fire, thinning, grazing and timber management – but the conversation has resulted in little action. The good: There are more prescribed fire associations being organized; the California Cattlemen’s Association led a legislative effort to create an “Ag Pass for Livestock,” loosely based off my experience trying 28 California Cattleman November 2022
to gain access to my range to protect livestock during the Bear Fire, that has been signed into law by Governor Newsom; legislation was passed and signed limiting liability for prescribed fire practitioners; and there is increasing recognition (and data) that grazing to reduce fuel loads can lower fire intensity. Good. But it is not nearly enough. I have been having conversations with legislators and regulators in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., who have begun to recognize the scope of the problem that is devastating the West. Talk is cheap, but at least acknowledging the challenge with some bipartisan agreement provides a slim ray of hope. Yet, there are still no projects at scale – landscape level projects that truly could change the trajectory of destruction. I see local prescribed fire associations that are excited to do a 20-acre control burn! I applaud their enthusiasm and it is a start, so I am not being critical of the effort, but it is a drop in the proverbial bucket. We spend resources to meet and map and study and discuss and form groups to study it again. Sorry – that is a waste of precious resources (people, time and dollars) that should be at work on the landscape. As I said two years ago...DO SOMETHING. Please. Ask those who live and work on the land for solutions.
Unloading cattle in the mountains before the fire.