Good Fire on the Mountain

On December 12-14th, 2025, the Mail Ridge Wildfire Resilience Project moved into the prescribed fire phase of its restoration efforts.

Members of Briceland Fire, Telegraph Ridge Volunteer Fire, Palo Verde Volunteer Fire, Petrolia Fire, the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association and cultural fire practitioners from Hybrid Indigenous Stewardship came together to help bring what the Wailaki people call N’Shong Konk (“Good Fire”) back to the southern Humboldt landscape.

Following several weeks of site preparation work by the Briceland Fuels Crew, Native Health in Native Hands and Hybrid Indigenous Stewardship, weather conditions aligned to conduct effective burning. Approximately 90 acres of oak under story and roadside piles were treated just ahead of wetting rain.

This work will help improve overall forest health by removing ladder fuels and limiting fir encroachment in the oak woodlands providing a measure of protection from higher intensity fires in dry season conditions. It also will establish a strategic shaded fuel break to support future prescribed burns within the larger 269-acre project area.

The Mail Ridge Wildfire Resilience Project, Phase 1 is the first fuels reduction and prescribed fire implementation effort of a larger, landscape-scale project along the entire 54-mile long crest of Mail Ridge in southern Humboldt and northern Mendocino counties. Past management practices and the exclusion of low-intensity fire has increased the region’s vulnerability to catastrophic wildfire, jeopardizing the ability of forests to sequester carbon and perform critical ecological functions into the future.