California Chaparral vs CalFire

Within a few weeks, Nature in California will be facing a decisive event.
A twenty year legal effort to get Cal Fire to develop a plan to save lives and property from wildfires, rather than clearing millions of acres of native habitat, will finally be heard by the California State Court of Appeal.
Our arguments are strong primarily because Cal Fire’s approach is based on a cynical ploy to circumvent state law by redefining native shrublands as having only 10% cover. Yes, that’s right, 10% cover. To Cal Fire, the millions of acres of beautiful, closed-canopy chaparral that covers much of California is not natural or normal.
By misrepresenting the plant identification key in the California Native Plant Society’s Manual of California Vegetation, Cal Fire claims that if 90% of all shrubs are cleared from a native shrubland habitat (by herbicide, shredding, or prescribed fire), it is still a shrubland. Therefore, they claim their habitat clearance projects will not be converting chaparral, or sage scrub, or Great Basin sagebrush habitats to flammable, non-native grasslands because, after all, if there’s an occasional shrub still remaining, it’s still a shrubland.
For a pictorial view of the kind of “shrublands” Cal Fire will be creating, visit our Too Much Fire and “Fuel” Treatments webpages.
The future of Nature in California will depend on the outcome of our case as California State Parks, government agencies, and many land conservancies are eager to compromise Nature to obtain habitat clearance grants to fund their bureaucracies.
Time: Monday, May 12, 2025, at 1:30 p.m.
Place: District Court of Appeal, 750 B Street, Suite 300, San Diego, CA 92101

https://californiachaparral.org/threats/too-much-fire/

https://californiachaparral.org/threats/cal-fire/

What will the future look like?

Plant Native California Plants and Learn more about Fire and the Chaparral at CaliforniaChaparral.Org

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