The fire started as a thin dribble of flame.
Within moments the entire grassy hillside above Limantour Road in the Point Reyes National Seashore was engulfed; grass blackened and coyote brush burned with a crackle that sounded almost like falling rain. Eerie brown shadows raced across the ground as columns of smoke scudded in front of the sun.
“Someday this could save Bolinas if we get another big fire,” said park Superintendent Don Neubacher yesterday, as he watched the flames gradually spread.
Wednesday’s prescribed 25-acre burn is part of a network of fuel breaks designed to stop another disaster like the Vision Fire of 1995. Keeping the vegetation low through burning and mowing should help slow or stop a future wildfire.
The park plans to burn the Limantour sites every five to ten years, said Jennifer Chapman, a fire communications specialist with the Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS). This will keep the coastal scrub in an immature stage with smaller, widely spaced coyote brush where fire will move more slowly than in areas with large, dense coyote brush.
“We want to punch little units of different age classes along the road,” said Roger Wong with PRNS, who was in charge of the fire crews.
Having patches of younger, recently burned vegetation is also healthy for coastal California landscapes. Many of the historic fires, thought to have been started by coast Miwok, benefited plants and animals that are adapted to coexist with fire.
Bishop pine, for example, can only release seed after its cones are opened by a fire. Coyote brush can survive a hot burn, resprouting from the roots even if its leaves and stems are killed.
Without regular fire, forests get clogged with tinder and grasslands disappear under dense shrubs. Fires benefit tule elk, rabbits and myriad bird species, which rely on open grassy areas to survive. Endangered Myrtle’s silverspot butterfly only lays its eggs on the leaves of grassland violets.
“A lot of people think that one of the top five threats to the native ecosystem is a lack of fire,” Neubacher said.
It’s also possible that fire suppression has contributed to the spread of Sudden Oak Death, PRNS senior science advisor Sarah Allen said on Wednesday.
PRNS first used prescribed fire as a resource management tool during a small burn in 1978, Chapman said. By the 1990s a prescribed burn program was well established. Fire management is the first goal of the program, and improving ecosystem health through reducing non-native plants and improving biodiversity is the second.
Control of the invasive French broom is one goal for a second 115-acre burn scheduled to take place this Friday along Highway One. That site, which will mainly serve as a fuel break, is scheduled to be burned more frequently in order to control the broom.
Almost 60 firefighters from nine different crews came out to participate in this week’s burns. Participants included the Inverness Fire Department, Marin County Fire Department, the Mount Tam fire crew, the Golden Gate National Park fire crew, and a Yosemite National Park crew.
“We have more engines here than we need, but it’s sort of a training opportunity,” Chapman said. “We get to bring all the agencies together and work on a project.”
