Renewal by Fire

How prescribed burns are healing Montaña de Oro’s landscape and honoring long-held stewardship traditions. 

By Michele Bigley 

This is not a new story. 

Indigenous communities have stewarded Montaña de Oro’s coastal bluffs and golden rolling hills with fire since time immemorial. They didn’t rely on formal degrees or online tutorials; instead, they passed down generations of wisdom on how to manage fire and the land. These early land stewards understood something that modern land caretakers are just beginning to realize: California’s wildlands aren’t just meant to burn — they need fire. 

Today the environmental science team at Montaña de Oro State Park is blending this ancient knowledge with modern science, harnessing fire as a tool to prevent more-destructive wildfires. Katie Drexhage, the park’s Senior Environmental Scientist, believes prescribed burns will help protect Montaña de Oro’s 10,000 acres of bishop pine, eucalyptus, and California poppy-covered hills. This park is also home to 7 miles of coastal bluffs, an annual festival of monarch butterflies, and species of concern like Western snowy plovers, Morro shoulderband snails, and California red-legged frogs. With tens of thousands of residents nearby, over a million visitors annually, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to the south, and growing threats of climate events, protecting this region has never been more imperative. Managing fire effectively is a critical tool for preserving the unique landscape. 

Prescribed burning is not a new tool, just a modern term for an age-old practice. The landscape is resilient; even in drought years, fog helps sustain it. However, aging trees, population growth, extreme heat, wildfires, atmospheric rivers, and invasive species have weakened Montaña de Oro State Park’s resilience. 

Many Indigenous communities hold the belief that land stewardship must consider the impact on the next seven generations — a guiding principle that emphasizes long-term care and respect for natural systems. This means respecting the land’s capacity to meet our needs while allowing the soil to regenerate. Because this was not the case for the seven generations between Spanish colonization to now, ecologists throughout the state are having to repair the damage that increases the threat of wildfire. Many of them are choosing prescribed burns as a primary tool. 

For the prescribed pile burns most typical in state parks, dry and overgrown brush, which fire ecologists refer to as fuel, is painstakingly collected into piles and burned during the cool and wet winter and spring months. Smoldering piles are consistently monitored by certified burn bosses like Environmental Scientist Kelly McFadden to ensure fires don’t escape the controlled burn area. McFadden says, “Frankly, it’s usually a slow, dull process.” And it’s expensive. Prescribed burns require plenty of trained hands, all properly outfitted with personal protective equipment, enough water tanks, and up-to-date tools. 

Back in the 1950s, when fire ecology was still focused on fire suppression, Montaña de Oro became the first state park in California to conduct a prescribed burn. At the time, the common theory was to extinguish fires immediately rather than allowing flames to safely run their course.   

What they didn’t realize was that California oaks and redwoods need fire to survive and that some endangered species, like the Morro manzanita, only open their seeds after a fire or that one of ecologists’ greatest tools to reinvigorate a landscape — and give native plants a chance to survive — is by burning away fuel. 

By the 1990s, the team began using prescribed burns more actively, despite limited funding. Montaña de Oro is home to seven different species of eucalyptus, planted in the late 1800s for timber. Unfortunately, the species turned out to be highly invasive. Over the years, these groves have expanded from 80 acres to 350, crowding out native species and significantly increasing wildfire.  

For nearly a decade, the forestry team carried out as many prescribed burns as their budget allowed. The most common areas were near human interfaces like campgrounds and trails, but they also focused on the accessible edges of the eucalyptus grove, where large water tanks could be hauled in. 

McFadden explains, “Nowhere in California burns eucalyptus like we do. Eucalyptus is a fire adapted species. It likes to burn. We need a water source nearby. Then we have to go back through and pull the saplings after burns to make the forest healthier and reduce the fire risk.” 

After two fires burned the park in 2011 and 2012 and after seeing how catastrophic wildfires were affecting the entire state, the San Luis Obispo Coast District, which includes Montaña de Oro State Park, finally received funding from CalFire in 2020. The environmental science team was able to scale up operations, with two certified burn bosses, including McFadden, one of only four female burn bosses in the entire state park system, and now their regional office employs a staff of 19, half of whom are fire trained. 

Even with this new funding, the team faces ongoing challenges. Personal protective equipment is still a major hurdle. State regulations require a lot of red tape just to purchase the proper gear, which can take years and endless paperwork. Drexhage explains, “No one is allowed in the field for burns without proper equipment, and it can be challenging to replace certain items due to internal purchasing procedures and administrative processes.” 

This past year, local donors decided to take matters into their own hands. Drexhage says, “Anonymous donors coordinated with California State Parks Foundation to get us funding for gear. It was a significant gift — huge — that we used for essential supplies like sturdy fire pants, which we need to replace regularly but are difficult to obtain through our internal purchasing processes on our own. Our boot allowance is never enough. We can buy boots for $300 that last for one season, or $600 for two. Being properly geared up helps us move forward and enables us to have more staff to get the work done.” 

McFadden adds, “The California State Parks Foundation grant was the first I heard of someone donating specifically for our program. It boosted morale on the crew to know people support us, that they will take that financial burden off us, and make sure we have the proper clothing, which seems like something that isn’t hard. But it’s expensive, and it’s our responsibility to buy our uniforms.” 

This donation, along with additional funding from Proposition 4 — federal money allocated for wildfire prevention — has allowed the team to begin implementing a long-term plan to remove unhealthy eucalyptus and replant with native species. McFadden says, “We could see small natives struggling for light and suffocated by leaf litter. By burning, we see native plants like oaks, sagebrush, coyote brush, and sticky monkeyflower come back. Some species only arrive when fire passes through, so endangered species recovery is an added bonus.” 

The park is home to five overwintering western monarch sites, and while some monarch enthusiasts were initially hesitant about the burns, Drexhage explains, “We showed them that it might look like scorched earth at first. But after the coastal fog and first rain, it all starts greening. Thousands of monarchs came back because pile burns did not impact their roosting habitat; instead, it protected it by reducing the amount of dead branches and leaf duff that were creating a bigger wildfire threat. We do not work inside or adjacent to monarch overwintering sites when the monarchs are present, and we created a smoke protocol to make sure smoke doesn’t impact the monarchs if we’re working anywhere near a site during the overwintering period.” 

Drexhage adds, “Wildfires are inevitable, and that’s terrifying. We remain hopeful that we won’t have to face one, but it would be ignorant to assume one won’t happen. Fires are often started by human activity, and we need to manage the landscape to reduce fuel loads. Prescribed burns are one way we can reduce that risk. We can do this without CalFire’s on-site assistance because we have two burn bosses on staff.” 

The ultimate goal is to restore Montaña de Oro to its pre-settlement condition, a natural environment dominated by native species. Drexhage explains: “Eucalyptus is a nonnative species and people love the forest. And since we’ve been thinning the groves, people have started appreciating the area more. We’re not just reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire — we are bringing the park back to life by allowing native species to survive and grow in the forested area.” 

This season, the team completed 1,000 pile burns, covering about 5-10 acres. With the right equipment and more staff, they hope to continue their vital work to protect Montaña de Oro for future generations.