Field Training: Fuels Treatments in the Urban Wildland Interface: Lessons learned from the San Mateo County Parks Project

This is an opportunity to learn about a collaborative forest health and fuel reduction project at Huddart and Wunderlich County Parks, in Silicon Valley’s wildland-urban interface (WUI). Participants will increase their understanding of how San Mateo County Parks fuels reduction projects improve forest health and community wildfire resiliency in the urban wildland interface.

This field training will focus on the collaboration between San Mateo County Parks, the San Mateo Resource Conservation District (RCD), and contractors including Auten Resource Consulting. This project was designed to maximize the co-benefits of fuel reduction, while applying treatments with an ecosystem-focused lens of reintroducing low-intensity disturbance into forest and shrubland landscapes in the parks. As one of the first and largest CalVTP projects approved and completed in the region, participants will gain valuable lessons-learned from the project team as well as the importance of effective communication in a project of this size and scale to an urban and suburban communities.

Participants will learn how the project’s success was ultimately contingent upon a diverse group of stakeholders relying on different yet complimentary skill sets to accomplish a common goal. We will hear from subject-matter experts from San Mateo County Parks, the San Mateo RCD, and Auten Resource Consulting and learn about areas for improvement across all phases of the project. This is an opportunity for community members and neighbors to learn more about how this project is increasing the pace and scale of fuels treatments in the area.