Doing Our Part to Mitigate the Risk from Wildfires

Seasonal wildfires has always been a part of life for people living in California and the western United States. However, as the scale and intensity of wind-driven fires increase, public agencies and private organizations are working to assess wildfire hazards and implement wildfire mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of these tragic events. Some of these strategies include developing wildfire mitigation plans, removing hazard trees, thinning and clearing of vegetated areas for fire breaks, creating fuel modification zones, and clearing utility line rights-of-ways to reduce fires caused by line strikes. Many agencies and construction companies are now required to develop Fire Plans for construction activities and to maintain firefighting equipment during the project construction. As part of these important strategies, Aspen is supporting our public and private clients with a variety of wildfire services. Our teams of environmental professionals, foresters, and regulatory specialists are working on fuels management projects on lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to facilitate the safe removal of vegetation from targeted areas and to reforest areas damaged by previous fires. Aspen is also working on vegetation management strategies to provide fuel breaks around residential communities and implement vegetation clearing along major utility rights-of-way. This effort requires extensive coordination with regulatory agencies, landowners, and utilities in order to develop approaches that mitigate fire risk while minimizing impacts to waterways, cultural resources, and sensitive biological communities.  We look forward to providing these services to new clients as we all work together to prevent and mitigate unnecessary wildfires.