STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE FUELS REDUCTION

Adding to the great work done through KTREX this year, WKRP partners made significant strides in fuels reductions through implementation of projects and engagement of the AHAL (All Hands, All Lands) burn team model This WKRP strategy (entitled above), links together all WKRP strategies (there are nine total) Another strategy - developing inclusive partnerships to implement zones of agreement, is depicted well in the restoration and planning discussed here.

Due to a track record of success and trusting relationships, the start of July had WKRP partners again engaging the local AHAL burn team to take advantage of the seasonal burn window. A total of 215 acres of broadcast burning was completed with dozens of training opportunities, including federal "burn boss" (RxB2) and California state certified burn boss (CARX) trainees.

Morgan Point by Eric Darragh, Mid Klamath Watershed Council Fire and Forestry Director, December, 2022

In 2022, WKRP partners submitted a proposal to state Board of Forestry to tier 31,000 acres of fuels treatments to the CA Vegetation Treatment Program (VTP) Environmental Impact Report (EIR) via a Project Specific Addendum (PSA). This PSA will essentially provide CEQA coverage for all private lands within the entire WKRP planning area and significantly streamline the process!

The Somes Project (Somes Bar Integrated Management Project), WKRP’s first landscape scale project, is now in it's fourth season of implementation. Approximately 232 acres of manual thinning; and 229 acres of mechanical thinning were completed in 2022. Through KTREX, partners conducted broadcast burns on 233 acres; while a backlog of over 425 acres of hazardous piles were addressed with help from the Six Rivers National Forest (SRNF). Between the Somes Project and KTREX, where we accomplish the lion's share of our collaborative work, we completed over 1,065 acres of restoration and fuels reduction. The Somes Project was designed around four distinct focal areas demonstrating collective agreement among partners including the strategic approach to treat high priority, dangerous fuels in densely populated areas, and to restore diverse wildlife habitats, plant communities, and fire’s ecological role. We’re beginning to wrap up all first-entry (of a multi-phased approach) manual thinning treatments (5,390 acres) including burning piles (1,357 acres). This means we are close to having significant acreage ready for reentry of restorative prescribed fire. Some of these fire-prone areas have not experienced fire for over 100 years; we are racing against time to treat these areas before wildfires return to them We are looking forward to working with our USFS partners to problem-solve around scaling-up controlled-burning acreage treatments on national forest system lands.

Other strategic activities include the 10-year WKRP Plan Renewal and the Orleans-Somes Bar (OSB) Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) update. Both of these plans will inform one another and project priorities over the next decade and will focus on addressing acute as well as broad threats to our landscape from extreme wildfire. Some of these include safeguarding homes and properties; renewing strategies by re-looking at past agreements; evaluating actions; and integrating lessons and new understandings to achieving our mission of creating community and forest resiliency to wildland fire.

2022 also marked the initiation of the SRNF Fire and Fuels Environmental Assessment (EA). WKRP's Core Team is thrilled at the potential this EA could hold with scaling up critically-needed prescribed fire.

In 2022, WKRP joined the federal CFLRP cohort (Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program) comprised of 15 partnerships across the country. This marked a significant advance in our strategy of creating sustainable, diverse revenue streams towards socioecological goals of resiliency, by providing significant implementation funding for a 10-year period. Closely linked is how this advance is aiding another strategy - integrating food security into forest management actions, by uniquely supporting instream and upslope restoration, together. As fisheries work continually strives toward building healthy anadromous fish populations, we are meeting this strategy upslope through the Ikxariyatuuyship (“Spirit Mountain”; IKX) Project (in the planning phase). The culturally significant IKX project, is being undertaken by the Forest Service in close coordination with the Karuk Tribe and WKRP partners to prepare the ancestral landscape to promote cultural focal species, human gathering activities, spiritual practices and place-based, social-ecological relationships reliant upon continual interaction with a healthy ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem here supports Karuk cultural values and human communities as part of the natural setting; experiences fire at relatively self-limiting scales; and promotes biodiversity and socio-ecological resiliency.

During the 2022 field season, SRRC, Karuk, and MKWC crews visited and assessed 62 tributaries identified for fish passage improvement, of these, 44 tributaries were treated for barrier removal and/or fish passage improvement Each site was identified based on recovery actions outlined in the Mid Klamath Subbasin Plan and Recovery Strategy for California Coho Salmon (CDFW, 2004) In total, 63 barriers or impediments to passage were remediated, making 81 4 miles of stream accessible to juvenile and adult salmonids

*Dam removal update!* In November, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) unanimously approved the surrender of the Lower Klamath Project License and the decommissioning of its four hydroelectric dams. The license surrender order is the final decision by FERC and the action that allows the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) to remove the dams and implement restoration activities. KRRC plans to begin dam removal activities in 2023 with completion marked for January 2024.