NEVADA COUNTY, Calif. โ Nevada County community members are invited to attend the โHard Choices in the Woods: Forests, Fire and Herbicideโ Town Hall on forest health and vegetation management tools used to reduce wildfire risk in Nevada County. The Town Hall will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, at the Miners Foundry Cultural Center, 325 Spring St., Nevada City.
Local organizations and agencies will discuss forest management practices used to improve forest health, reduce wildfire risk, and support safer evacuations across the county. These entities are actively implementing work and bring unique perspective to why different treatments are used, what they accomplish and what their limitations are.
โThe consequences of catastrophic fire are not new to this community. In the race to rebalance the health of our forests before another disaster, we need to use a variety of available tools.
While recognizing that none of them are perfect, understanding the benefits, risks, and unknowns for all the tools we have is crucial to understanding how forest health management decisions are made and implemented,โ said Aaron Zettler-Mann, SYRCL Executive Director.
Panelists at the Town Hall are engaged in regional implementation projects ranging from work at the individual parcel level to work across thousands of acres. These organizations convene regularly as part of the Quarterly Wildfire Stakeholder Collaborative where they share best practices and lessons learned from this work.
The Town Hall will be facilitated by the City of Nevada City. โAs we confront the unprecedented scale of the wildfire crisis, these conversations are essential to understanding both the challenges we face and the tools available to address them,โ said Evan McLenithan, City of Nevada City Community Risk Reduction Officer.
Community members can submit questions in advance through the Town Hall Survey. Questions submitted through the survey will help inform the panel discussion.
โPart of achieving our shared goal of healthy forests is embracing uncertainty and nuance and making decisions that allow us to embrace that uncertainty while building on what has worked in the past. This is where consideration of all the tools in the toolbox must to come in,โ said Jeff Lauder, Executive Director, Sierra Streams Institute.
Community partners at the Town Hall include South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL), Sierra Streams Institute, Nevada County Resource Conservation District, Yuba Watershed Institute, the
U.S. Forest Service, the Nevada County Agricultural Commissioner, HUแน WEJ, Nevada County Prescribed Burn Association, Nevada Irrigation District (NID), City of Grass Valley, City of Nevada City, Nevada County Office of Emergency Services, and Bear Yuba Land Trust.
Town Hall Details
Date: Thursday, Aug. 27
Time: 5:30 to 7 p.m.
Location: Miners Foundry Cultural Center, 325 Spring St., Nevada City.
About the Nevada County Office of Emergency Services (OES) OES works under the Emergency Preparedness Board Objective, leading the community in all-hazards planning, preparedness, response, and recovery, with a focus on wildfire. OES focuses on improving countywide evacuation routes and safety, continuing to strengthen early-alert and critical communication systems, and working with residents and community partners on emergency preparedness, defensible space, home hardening, green-waste disposal, and fire-safe land stewardship. We are all in this together. Learn more about OES at ReadyNevadaCounty.org.