WUI

HomeWUI

Standard Strategic WUI

WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) three strategy goals are resilient landscapes, fire-adapted communities, and safe and effective risk-based wildfire response.  Many communities in the west have favorable spatial arrangement of homes due to the limited amount of sprawling wildland urban intermix, resulting in a series of Cluster Communities which makes it feasible to create and identify Community Encompassing Fire Lines.  Fire Lines are an integral component to the Standard Strategic WUI, a plan that immediately increases our community’s wildfire resiliency, and at the same time creates infrastructure supporting the reintroduction of frequent landscape scale prescribed fire, which is capable of preventing and replacing catastrophic wild fire. The intent is to protect communities first and simultaneously work towards solving the forest health crisis with frequent Rx fire.

Standard Strategic WUI
Three tiered WUI designation. The title of each segment (Primary, Secondary and Tertiary) alludes to the prioritization of efforts. The plan segments the WUI to a defined and manageable size suitable for private land owners, PBA’s Terra Fuego and Cal Fire, while maintaining a robust WUI for Categorical Exemptions and grant funding opportunities for the public lands.

Plan Prioritization:
1) Identify and construct Fire Lines and fuel breaks around communities.
2) Prescribed fire in and around communities.
3) Landscape restoration - Reintroducing frequent fires in between towns and communities. Inter-Community - greater landscape between our communities.

Community Encompassing Fire Line:
Cluster communities, will need encompassing fire line (fuel breaks) that follow the contour of the land for fire line suitability rather than along property boundaries. Some preexisting fuel breaks that fit this description already exist around communities in the appropriate distance for small scale private land owner management (Example of preexisting fuel breaks: roads, railroads, powerlines, dozer lines, etc.) they need to be identified and where they are nonexistent will need to be constructed.

Benefits:
1) Provides Immediate pre-wildfire suppression infrastructure, protection.
2) Reduces risk for prescribing fire within the WUI.
3) Community cohesion: “we are in this together”.
4) Separates communities from the greater landscape fuel continuum, allowing for landscape scale inter-community prescribed fire.
Primary WUI
This is where the actual WUI begins, and is defined by the area within the Community Encompassing Fire Line. The size of the Primary WUI fluctuates depending upon the topography, and preexisting Community Encompassing Fire Line. The Primary WUI mostly consists of private land, but will also have portions of public land.

Benefits:
1) Smaller “tighter” WUI designation allowing private land owners (Terra Fuego, PUC, Cal Fire, etc.) the ability to frequently prescribe fire with less risk.
2) Special designation of the Primary WUI would receive VIP grant funding to maintain sparse fuel accumulation.
3) Well defined Primary WUI confirmed with GPS and mapped with GIS.
Secondary WUI
Defined as the portion outside of the Primary WUI, one step further away from our communities. The Secondary WUI is the portion of land beyond community encompassing fire line, and the edge of the greater landscape. Mostly Public land but will also have some private lands. The size can be 1-mile GIS buffer from the Primary WUI.

Benefits:
1) Prioritizes program of work around the community encompassing fire line reinforcing pre-suppression efforts to protect communities.
2) Preparing for Inter-Community landscape - scale reintroduction of fire.
Tertiary WUI
Extends deeper in to the greater landscape. Mostly public lands. Size can be 2 miles from Primary WUI.

Benefit:
Frequent landscape scale prescribed fire allowing free range fire to “chaperone” the forest as it had for time immemorial. This provides -- Healthy forest, Catastrophic fire resiliency, Economic and natural ecosystem management, Economic suppression effectiveness, Wildlife habitat improvement, Forest shade cooling, Water / humidity retention.

Grant funding: The Standard Strategic WUI provides a “big picture” landscape scale solution that would require “Block Grant” funding to plan, implement, follow up, monitor, document and study.
This is a strategic plan with immediate, multi beneficial outcomes for the Primary WUI, and real landscape scale solutions capable of replacing catastrophic fire, by restoring natural frequent fire intervals — a ubiquitous critical ecological processes in the western fire prone biosphere, providing countless benefits to the environment.

Standard Strategic WUI

Protecting communities from wildfire and restoring healthy forests.