Firescaping Your Home

Destructive wildfires are becoming larger, hotter, and more frequent. Since 2000, an average of 7.1 million acres have burned across the US, more than double the average acreage that burned in the 1990s.  In 2020, wildfires burned 10.3 million acres in the US, and roughly 60% was in California (> 4 million acres), Oregon (> 1 million acres), and Washington (> 700,000 acres).  At the same time, more people are choosing to live adjacent to fire-prone wildlands.  In California alone, at least 25% of our 11 million residents live in the Wildland / Urban Interface (WUI), where development meets or intermingles with undeveloped wildlands.  One consequence of this development is an accelerating loss of native biodiversity through habitat fragmentation.  The home hardening and defensible spaces that we need to create to live safely near wildlands can also lead to habitat fragmentation.

We can compensate for clearing and building in the WUI by including native plants and wildlife resources in our landscaping.  Native plants and wildlife habitat in the human “built environment” effectively create wildlife bridges, or oases, to support pollinators and many of the species they interact with.  In our book, we review home hardening and defensive space essentials for wildfire safety.  Then we explore characteristics, installation, and maintenance of native plants (keeping fire safety/readiness in mind) to mitigate for the negative impacts of habitat fragmentation.  Some of the wildfires in recent years have been traumatic; but we can use lessons learned to help communities become more wildfire ready and resilient, while supporting the native wildland habitats that we love.