County’s vegetation management
plan is still incomplete

By Joe Naiman
The Alpine Sun

     SAN DIEGO — The county Planning Commission’s most recent review of the county’s draft vegetation management report deemed the report a work in progress but incomplete.
     The January motion approved by the Planning Commission was to accept the report, acknowledge it as a work in progress, direct county staff to incorporate comments by the public and the Planning Commission into the report’s next version, and request that the report return for a final review. The Planning Commission’s recommendation will go to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, who are expected to have a March hearing on the management plan.
     The vote was 5-1 in favor of the final motion, with Michael Beck in opposition and Bryan Woods absent. “What I find almost unethical is to proceed with something that’s not ready,” Beck said. “I’m going to try to carve out some time for that last iteration to occur.”
     “I’m not seeing any other agency or organization step forward,” Day said. “We’re stuck with the constraints that the board (of supervisors) has placed on us.”
     In May 2008 the San Diego County Board of Supervisors directed county staff to develop a comprehensive vegetation management program to be incorporated into the land management plans for all existing and future county-owned lands.
     The supervisors directed the county’s Chief Administrative Officer to pinpoint the costs and provide recommendations to implement four measures related to fire protection, one of which was working with the San Diego Forest Area Safety Task Force to create a risk assessment of vegetative fuels.
     The Forest Area Safety Task Force is assisting county staff in developing the vegetation management plan, and by June 2008 the task force had released a fuels assessment map, which identified the ten highest-priority areas. A subsequent decision to merge the Highway 94 Corridor East and Tecate Divide North areas into Southeast County reduced that number to nine.
     The top nine projects to be considered, in order of priority, are Palomar Mountain, the Laguna East I-8 Corridor, Southeast County, Greater Julian, San Luis Rey West, Rancho (Penasquitos/ Bernardo/ Santa Fe), Santa Margarita, Northeast County Warners, and Cuyamaca-Laguna. The project boundaries of those nine areas total 842,187 acres.
Each road and parcel with an improvement value of more than $10,000 was buffered by 500 feet, and the buffer areas within each project boundary were merged to define target zones. The target zones total 395,250 acres.
     Comments said that a comprehensive program is needed to address wildland fire threat and should also include planning and design concepts and regulations, building standards, evacuation routes and shelters, outreach and enforcement programs on clearing, and undergrounding power lines.
     Other comments expressed were that the plan was not science-based and that more input was needed from scientists, that fires including controlled burns cause native vegetation to be replaced with more flammable non-native weeds and grasses, and that the plan may be susceptible to a CEQA challenge.
     The Planning Commission’s recommendations included extending the time period for completion of the vegetation management plan report, adding herbicide treatment for non-native vegetation, and noting existing County policies oriented toward reducing the risk of wildfire damage to structures.
     The fourth and most recent draft of the report was released December 23.
     “This report will help identify the steps we need to go forward,” said Tom Oberbauer, who is coordinating the report on behalf of the county’s Department of Planning and Land Use.
     Oberbauer cautioned that the report itself is not a full plan. “It’s basically an identification of all the issues,” he said.
The plan begins with an introduction, which includes the county’s fire history. The second section addresses fuel management tools including hand cutting, mechanized tools, goats and other herbivores, herbicides, and prescribed burns. The third section outlines plans for the nine priority areas. The fourth section, which is the added section, addresses management of vegetation by land agencies. The fifth section covers potential future options.
     Oberbauer emphasized that controlled burns are only one fuel management tool. “There’s no proposal to do full-scale controlled burning throughout the county,” he said.
     Landscape contractor Greg Rubin specializes in native plants and has yet to lose a home to fire. “What I want to emphasize is the quote-unquote recovery,” he said of burned vegetation. “The recovery’s almost completely suppressed by non-native weeds.”
     Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute noted that wildland-urban interface issues were the most significant factor in protecting structures.
     “There’s a fundamental false assumption that it’s native vegetation’s fault,” he said.
     “You should not make a lunar landscape of San Diego’s Back Country because you’re afraid politically of another disaster,” Conklin said. “Houses burn just like chaparral. Don’t put the houses in the chaparral.”
     CalFire region staff chief of resource management Thom Porter noted that resources would allow for the prescribed burning of only about 7,000 acres annually, although other vegetation management techniques would increase the total area managed over a year’s time. “This is an extremely complex issue,” he said. “I have been amazed with their ability to put something together.”
     “Man has basically managed this county in the same manner, that is to burn it, to thin it,” said lifelong San Diego County resident John Elliott, who lives in Descanso.
     The Native American practice of burning was replaced by 20th-century practices. “They’ve been a failure. They haven’t worked,” he said.
     Elliott noted that no man-made intervention was used in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park prior to its destruction in the Cedar Fire. “It will never be the same. All the pine trees are dead. The cedar trees are dead,” he said.
     “We’re going to change the way we do things. We’re going to change the way we manage our open space lands.” Elliott said. “The worst thing we can do is allow this management plan to morph into what we have today.”

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