Smoke billows and ash falls. California’s ambitious wildfire prevention scheme is now little more than smoldering embers itself. The state’s forest-to-fuel export plan – a program that promised to transform excessive woody biomass from hazardous fuel reduction efforts into energy products – has disintegrated faster than a dead pine in a lightning strike.
What went wrong? For starters, the math never added up. Officials targeted treating one million acres annually by 2025, creating mountains of woody biomass with nowhere to go. Turns out having hundreds of millions of tons of forest debris is a problem, not a solution. Who knew?
The math collapsed like a burning snag—millions of acres treated, billions of branches produced, zero realistic disposal options.
Environmental groups weren’t having it either. They raised holy hell about potential ecosystem destruction. Soil damage, habitat loss, biodiversity reduction – the list of concerns grew taller than a sequoia. Critics pointed out the irony: replacing wildfire hazards with industrial-scale extraction pressures. Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
The North Coast region became the poster child for the plan’s failures. Despite fancy legislation – Proposition 4 and Assembly Bill 100 allocating over $30 million toward wildfire prevention and biomass projects – the region simply lacked infrastructure to handle existing volumes, let alone future ones. Money can’t buy processing capacity that doesn’t exist. This inadequate capacity threatens both ecological and economic resilience throughout the region.
Governor Newsom tried salvaging the situation with Executive Order N-25-25, streamlining approvals for fuels reduction. Too little, too late. The whole scheme needed environmental reviews anyway. Can’t bypass Mother Nature with paperwork, Governor.
CAL FIRE and the USFS pivoted to traditional approaches: prescribed burns and mechanical thinning. Less sexy than a grand export scheme, but at least they work. The $75 million Stewardship Agreement for maintaining strategic fuel breaks in national forests represents the new, scaled-back reality.
The lesson? Sometimes simple is better. California’s forest management needed a practical tune-up, not a complete engine replacement with parts that don’t fit. The biomass export dream is dead. Forest management continues. Life goes on. The trees, meanwhile, couldn’t care less.
References
- https://www.grants.ca.gov/grants/2025-wildfire-forest-resilience-directed-grant-program/
- https://wildfiretaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/californiawildfireandforestresilienceactionplan.pdf
- https://www.fws.gov/office/sacramento-fish-and-wildlife/california-forest-conservation-plan
- https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/02/26/secretary-rollins-initiates-new-public-private-partnership-reduce-wildfire-risk
- https://northcoastresourcepartnership.org/resilience-plan/solution/forest-biomass-residuals/
