BLM California News.bytes 
News.bytes Extra, issue 561

BLM, Partners Complete Prescribed Burn at Lacks Creek Site

The BLM Arcata Field Office and its partners have completed another in a series of projects to improve natural resource conditions at the Lacks Creek Area northeast of Arcata.  A seven-acre prescribed burn completed Dec. 11 at Sidehill Prairie capped this year's work to restore oak woodlands, prairies and wildlife habitat. (text continues below)

fire crew members light a prescribed burn
Fire crews ignite a burn along a steep hillside at Lacks Creek.

fog moves in over an area burned by prescribed fire
Fog rolls in over a burned area, giving an eerie feel to the Lacks Creek landscape.

The field office has received funding from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to augment agency funding for work in the area.  The Hoopa Tribe, whose reservation neighbors the BLM Lacks Creek area, has worked on the project along with crews from the Six Rivers National Forest, cooperating under a Service First agreement with the BLM.

Graduate students from Humboldt State University will be joining the project soon, helping to analyze fire effects on native bunch grasses and other meadow plants.

Remote cameras  have already shown that more deer and elk are moving into the area, attracted by new fresh forage resulting from the habitat restoration projects.

Lacks Creek is in California‘s northern Coast Range, approximately 15 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean.  The management area includes 8,673 acres of BLM managed public lands – 7,377 acres are within the Lacks Creek watershed, with the other acreage made up of contiguous lands. The management area is surrounded by large private land timber holdings, and the region contains some of the most productive and intensively managed commercial forest lands in the United States. The immediate area is sparsely populated with scattered ranches in adjacent Redwood Valley.
 
- Photos by Dan Wooden, prescribed fire/fuels specialist, Arcata Field Office.

- Jeff Fontana, Public Affairs Officer, BLM Northern California District (December, 2012)

BLM California News.bytes, issue 561 -- To subscribe to News.bytes, send an e-mail to: mailto:Join-Newsbytes@List.ca.blm.gov OR visit our News.bytes subscription page.