Due to a prolonged wet spring, the Almanor Ranger District of the Lassen National Forest is poised to implement a late spring prescribed burn approximately two miles east of the community of Inskip in Butte County.
The Minnow Prescribed Burn is part of a larger network of units that comprise a Defensible Fuel Profile Zone. The objectives of DFPZs are to reduce the potential for crown fire while providing fire suppression personnel a safer location from which to take action against a wildfire. These units have been previously logged. The final step of treatment is prescribed underburning to decrease surface fuels such as downed logs and sticks as well as ladder fuels.
Prescribed burning will begin when weather conditions allow for safe and effective burning conditions. Up to 200 acres may be burned. Smoke from the burn will be visible from Paradise, Chico and other communities in the Sacramento Valley.
Smoke is a natural byproduct of prescribed burn operations, and fire managers take precautions to manage it. Burning only takes place on permissive burn days identified by local air pollution control districts and fire managers coordinate with other public agencies and industrial landowners to limit the amount of smoke in the air at any one time.
“Prescribed burning is a valuable tool that has been proven to limit subsequent wildfire severity as well as improve conditions for firefighters by decreasing fire behavior in areas that have experienced prescribed fire,” said Chris Christofferson, Acting Forest Supervisor, Lassen NF.
“The Lassen National Forest remains committed to using prescribed fire in combination with other land management techniques to return public lands to a more natural, fire resilient condition while protecting communities from the effects of wildfires,” said Chris Christofferson, Acting Forest Supervisor, Lassen NF.
