This week, PCREW teamed up with our Wilderness Fuels Module Crew to prepare the Manzanita Lake area of Lassen Volcanic National Park for future prescribed fire.
For the past six years, crews like PCREW and the Wilderness Fuels Module have been thinning dense forested areas in the park to restore a healthy fire cycle. In places where thinning was completed before the 2021 Dixie Fire, historic park infrastructure was spared from damage. This summer, the focus turned to the Manzanita Units—an area mostly untouched by the Dixie Fire—so the park can safely reintroduce low- to moderate-intensity fire to the wilderness headwaters of the North Fork Feather River.
What the crew accomplished:
Learned traditional skills like bucking logs with crosscut saws (some more than 80 years old!)
Rearranged fuels and built burn piles along unit boundaries
Removed small diameter trees and brush using loppers and bow saws under the guidance of experienced Wilderness Fuels Module sawyers
Why it matters:
Prescribed fire, when carefully planned, reduces the risk of catastrophic wildfire, improves wildlife habitat, and even helps native plants like manzanita, whose seeds germinate after exposure to fire’s heat.
This project was funded by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and the High Roads Training Partnership, in collaboration with the National Park Service.
