Fuel Reduction Activities Planned near Castle Lake
Castle Lake in Siskiyou County. [Photo By Pacific Southwest Region 5]
The Shasta-Trinity National Forest Shasta McCloud Management Unit will be implementing fuels reduction activities in the Castle Lake area throughout the summer.
The project includes hand piling around the lake, mastication along the ridge north of the lake, and chipping along Castle Lake Road. More projects may be added if resources become available.
The purpose of these fuels reduction activities is to reduce risk while increasing ecological resilience in the area. In the event of a potential wildfire, these treatments aim to moderate fire behavior and increase the probability of success by fire suppression crews.
Fuels reduction is essential for reducing wildfire risk to lives and property and is a core element of our effort to increase the resiliency of our ecosystems.
“Hand thinning and pile treatments will make the area more defendable in the event of a wildfire, while the chipping treatment along Castle Lake Road aims to moderate fire behavior along the road and allow safer ingress and egress in the event of a fire,” said Brian D. Murphy, fuels management specialist with the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
The recreating public should be aware of personnel, equipment and large trucks that will be working near or entering roadways.
The piles created with this project are projected to be burned this Fall.
Every year millions of acres of wildfires destroy large areas of our national forests and grasslands with most being started by human activity, simple things like ensuring a campfire is properly extinguished or not setting off fireworks will help in stopping unintended fires.
For more information, please call Kimberly Hill, Public Affairs Officer, Shasta-Trinity National Forest (209) 768-0759 [email protected]
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They’re raking the forest. What a wonderful idea.
Are they Finnish yet?
Cleaning up the forest floor and removing dead and dying trees will reduce the fuel load and hopefully only the grass land will burn. If this is not done the brush, dead trees, etc., will send the flames up to the good tree canopies and travel from tree to tree burning everything in its path. The Indians used this method years ago to help protect our forests and with excellent results. Wildland fires have become a major threat to man, homes, animals, etc. The time has come to clean.
The forests ‘managed’ by forest service on the flanks of Mt. Shasta ARE A MESS! The ‘litter’ is broken limbs and slag, done by some machine that ‘grooms’ the plantation (cuz that’s what it is)…making this incredible mess that will catch on fire just looking at it wrong.
It’s very very dry up here…
just asking for it
Are you speaking of the masticator machines (mulchers)? If so, they do a good job of cutting out low brush, small dead trees, limbs, etc. It does not look very good that is for sure, but it does keep the fire from going up and crowning the trees.
Indians used prescribed burns to do this. Much research is showing this is the only practical solution. https://www.google.com/search?q=usfs+prescribed+burns
William, I said that in my comment, and you are correct about the Indians.
California needs about 10,000 mulchers. (masticators) (Rump ‘forest rakes’)
This shit just makes fire ready slag…the forest that burned during the Shelly fire were private timber Co but my impressions up there is they did a pretty good job with management; just not enough burning over the years.
It may make fire ready slag but it beats what is there now- fire ready brush. Masdicating keeps the fire low and out of the crowns of trees
I dare you to see what I saw in the Mt. Shasta plantation; it was torch ready.
And very difficult to walk thru…no duff-just broken branches.