Fire on the landscape,
In 2018 in California 1,893,913 acres burned across the state. Included in that number is the entire Paradise Community. As a Chico State student I first hand witnessed the disaster and trauma unfold on the community.
I knew of the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve (BCCER) from a class field trips and a senior project, I wanted to dive deeper into their use of fire on the landscape.
At the reserve land managers such as Don Hankins, Eli Goodsell and Zach Saitone use controlled fires to take care of fuel loads as well as invasive species. The tool of fire allows them to be better stewards on the land.
Wildfires are apart of these Northern California ecosystems, but at the scale and intensity they are raging at it is symptomatic of neglect of our public lands and climate change.
Through better land management, such as the change of policy on fire suppression there is hope just like there is hope in the valley next to Paradise.
This is my first edit of a short film about Fire Ecology being used on the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve (BCCER). A independent project for the Geoscience Department at Chico State.