In the stack of papers inside the notebook geologist Lynn Gray Jensen carries to interviews are maps from a 2009 fire plan she says illustrate the influence environmentalists have on public policy.
She points to one of the main recommendations in the 50-page Fire Management Plan created by the Ventura County Fire Protection District: It calls for firefighters to conduct more deliberately ignited and controlled fires, also called prescribed burns, on public and private lands to reduce overgrown brush and uncontrollable fires.
Due to complaints from environmentalists over air pollution, however, few controlled burns have been carried out in the county since 2009, she said.
On Dec. 4, 2017, nearly a decade after the fire plan was released, a high-fire-risk area identified in the document as the Ventura fuel bed, which contains about 43,000 acres, burned in the Thomas fire that destroyed 1,063 structures.
Most of the homes and buildings caught fire as Santa Ana winds whipped the blaze through brush-covered lands between Santa Paula, Ojai and Ventura.
UP FOR A VOTE—The map at top shows a proposed wildlife corridor that is being debated by county leadership. Proponents say it will help protect local wildlife like mountain lions, top right. Critics say it will make the area even more susceptible to deadly fires. Above, Bell Canyon resident Peter Carniglia walks with his 22-month-old grandson, Santino, on Dec. 18 past the burned hill near the entry gate to the unincorporated Ventura County community. Carniglia, pointing to the damage of recent fires, opposes the proposed wildlife corridor. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers
It was a predictable tragedy, said Jensen, executive director of the Ventura County Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business, or CoLAB.
The Thomas fire’s destruction might have been less, or avoided entirely, if the county had removed old brush in the Ventura fuel bed through regular prescribed burns, as the 2009 fire plan recommended, Jensen said.
“We predicted this, basically, back in 2009,” she said. “But environmentalists in California have such a huge impact. A lot of the politicians, they don’t really understand the issues, but they get pushed by these groups.”
Her latest case in point, Jensen said, is the county’s proposed wildlife corridor overlay zone, which would mark out tens of thousands of acres of protected wild lands, including hundreds of acres of privately owned farm and ranch land.
Nearing the end of what has thus far been a three-year process through the halls of county government, the overlay zone ordinance has support from conservationists and from leaders in Moorpark, Agoura Hills and other cities with boundaries inside the corridors or near unincorporated areas in the wildlife zones.
Courtesy of National Park Service
For Jensen and CoLAB, a nonprofit coalition of farmers, ranchers and related businesses formed in 2010 to challenge what they saw as a wave of stifling rules and laws targeting agriculture, the overlay zone ordinance adds one more layer of bureaucracy for farmers and ranchers to deal with.
“All these parcels are going to be in this wildlife corridor, and what it’s going to say is that the purpose of this land is no longer for these guys to live on; the purpose of the land is for wildlife passage,” Jensen said.
“They’re talking about, basically, having pristine wilderness and wildlife right next to where people live. Well, we all just saw what happened in the recent fires.”
Stretching across 401,200 acres of unincorporated land from the Santa Monica Mountains to Los Padres National Forest, the overlay zone would link the natural and man-made pathways that animals have historically used to travel between the forests but that have been fragmented over the years by human development.
WANTS LESS REGULATIONS—Lynn Gray Jensen is the executive director of CoLAB Ventura County, “a nonprofit organization formed in 2010 out of frustration with the local regulatory system,” according to its website. Courtesy of CoLAB Ventura County
In the eastern county, a proposed wildlife corridor extends through Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks to the Santa Monica Mountains and takes in large swaths of parks and protected open space.
After fires charred nearly 100,000 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains in November, the need for wildlife corridors connecting the two forests is urgent, said Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks, who proposed the overlay zone.
“Because of the recent fires . . . we need to be able to provide protection for these poor animals that are out in the Santa Monica Mountains where there isn’t any habitat left for them. It’s a moonscape,” she told the Acorn by phone. “They need the ability to cross over to where they can get grass and eat.”
But Jensen said the overlay zone ordinance, which is scheduled to be heard and discussed before a public hearing at a county planning commission meeting on Jan. 31, followed by a possible vote by the Board of Supervisors in February, will put more restrictions on landowners.
“Landowners within the corridor areas are already severely limited on what they can do on their properties. CoLAB is opposed to the size, scope and unnecessary regulations in the proposed wildlife corridor ordinance,” she said.”
The need for special permits for brush management will discourage owners from clearing dried brush from their land, and that will increase the potential for wildfires that destroy habitats, Jensen said.
County planning commissioners heard from farmers during three public hearings—two in June and one in August—including
Rick Brecunier of Tierra Rejada Family Farms in Moorpark.
“What could be more unfair than just a few landowners being subjected to the regulation of the public good?” he said. “Will the public be compensating landowners for the value they provide to wildlife?”
The county received more than 20 letters and comments, most of which were in support of the new zone. The overlay zone fits into the Moorpark General Plan, which requires developers to maintain natural wildlife corridors between open spaces and parks, former Moorpark City Manager Steven Kueny wrote in a letter to Parks in January 2017.
CoLAB has launched a legal fund and is “prepared to fund a lawsuit to protect agriculture, businesses and communities . . . from the negative consequences of this ordinance,” Jensen said.
The new zone will add regulations for property owners within the corridors, county planners said. For example, owners will need a special permit before constructing new houses or building near the wildlife corridors, said Kim Uhlich, a county senior planner. But houses and structures destroyed by fire would be exempt from the ordinance and could be replaced, she said.
Also, property owners who have streams or waterways running through their land would need a permit to clear brush within 200 feet of any “surface water,” but only once a year and only up to 10 percent of their lot, Uhlich said.
Clearing brush for fire prevention would still be allowed in the overlay zone, she said, and the ordinance does not regulate how owners can remove overgrown brush and dead timber.
In addition, “no new regulations regarding grading are being proposed,” she said in an email.
Farmers could still graze cattle as “the ordinance does not regulate animal grazing uses,” she said.
Other regulations affect the type of fencing and lighting owners can install. For example, security lighting on walkways and driveways would be allowed in the zone but only with motiondetecting sensors. Lights would have to be turned off after 10 p.m.
Owners within the corridors can install a fence if it’s watertight, Parks said.
“To say that these wildlife corridors are going to increase the fire danger—it does just the opposite,” she said. “It says, ‘Let’s not put new houses and new structures in these corridors where people will be threatened by the high risk” of fire.