Firefighters in the Los Padres National Forest are launching a series of prescribed burns over the next several months to get rid of brush on the Mount Pinos Ranger District.
That area includes a small portion of Santa Barbara County.
Firefighters will be burning piles of brush that have already been cut down.
The prescribed burns could start as early as Monday.
The burns are taking place near the Pine Mountain Club, Frazier Park, and Lake of the Woods.
From the California Association of 4-Wheel Drive Clubs:
Thanks to all of you who attended the recent public open house meetings held in the East Bay Area to detail the Draft Preferred Concept for the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area General Plan (DPC). Draft Preferred Concept.
Members of extreme anti-OHV groups were also there to try to impose their closure agenda on the OHV community and DPC planning team. Over the last seven years, those closure advocates have worked with East Bay Regional Parks on a massive and fraudulent campaign to build political support for an outright ban of OHV use on the Tesla property. They have been making weekly, if not daily, visits to the offices of State Senator Mark DeSaulnier and Assemblymember Joan Buchanan demanding legislation to enact an outright ban of OHV use at Tesla.
It is critically important that we counter that smear campaign by sending comments to the SVRA planning team and the aforementioned legislators.
Jay Gamel, reporting for the Kenwood Press, writes that uncertainty, objectives and habits all play a part in daily operations:
California’s state park system is under scrutiny by an independent commission tasked to revamp the entire system by 2015. As part of this process, the Parks Forward Commission has held 10 public workshops throughout the state, taking testimony from private and public sectors, seeking to find sources of sustainable funding, expand park availability to all Californians, and examine the role of private partners in the future of park operations.
More than 85,000 acres of magnificent desert are open for off-highway exploration and recreation within the boundaries of Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area. Ocotillo Wells SVRA is operated by California State Parks. To the south and east large tracts of BLM land (U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management) are also open to off-highway vehicles. The western boundary and part of the northern boundary of Ocotillo connect with the half-million acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which is closed to off-highway recreation, but open to exploration by highway-legal vehicles along established primitive roads.
The Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service has released a statement of its Leadership Intent for Ecological Restoration, which laid out the Region’s guiding vision and goals for its stewardship of wildland and forests for the next 15-20 years. The following draft document reflects the Regional leadership’s current thinking on how the Leadership Intent will be implemented. This draft is a beginning point for discussions with employees, partners, tribes, agencies, communities of place and interest and those who care about the future of their National Forests.
Like the Leadership Intent the Implementation Plan is fluid and we expect that adjustments will be made over time as the Region continues to collaborate; follow new science; and seek out and form new alliances. These ongoing processes will reveal new and smarter ways to increase the pace and scale of restoration work while balancing the ecological, social and economic benefits of our restoration actions. Regional leadership has committed to editing and improving this document following these discussions and then reviewing and updating it at least annually in the future years. Hence we invite discussion, input and insight to ensure that the Implementation Plan reflects and is responsive to new information, partnerships, and conditions.
