Prescribed Burn in Sierra Azul Preserve

Using Good Fire to Benefit People and Nature

Updated Friday, October 25 at 8:40 a.m.

A 9-acre prescribed burn is occurring today, Friday, October 25, in a closed area of Midpen’s Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve in partnership with CAL FIRE and Santa Clara County Fire.

Partnering and Planning

This prescribed burn is taking place adjacent to a reservoir where prescribed burns have been conducted in the past and is part of Midpen’s multifaceted Wildland Fire Resiliency Program.

Midpen’s fire-trained staff are working in close partnership with CAL FIRE, Santa Clara County Fire and professional fire ecologists to successfully implement the prescribed burn, which is weather permitting and will only occur if specific conditions are met. Many factors are considered in planning prescribed burns including weather conditions, public health and safety, visual impacts and protection of cultural and natural resources. Read CAL FIRE's press release regarding the planned prescribed burn here.

Stay Informed About This Prescribed Burn

What to Know:

Smoke may be visible rising from the burn site from trails in the Mount Umunhum area of Sierra Azul Preserve, and from throughout the South Bay and Santa Clara Valley. Please do not call 911.
All preserves, trails, parking areas and roads will remain OPEN, due to the burn being small and in a remote, closed area.
Fire personnel will remain onsite overnight after the prescribed burn is extinguished.

Returning Prescribed Burning to Midpen's Land Management Toolbox

Prescribed burning is a science-based tool in which low-intensity, controlled fire is intentionally set and fully extinguished in appropriate locations during specific conditions to improve ecosystem health and community safety. Reintroducing fire as a natural process reduces vegetation to more natural levels and serves an important role as nature's nutrient recycler.

Community and Ecological Benefits of Prescribed Burning

Midpen staff watching over a prescribed burn

Prescribed burns reduce the risk and intensity of wildfire by reducing unnatural buildup of vegetation caused in-part by decades of fire suppression. (Midpen)

This prescribed burn will help keep grasslands open that rare western pond turtles and other grassland-dependent native wildlife depend on. (Ken Hickman)

Spring grass grows in a prescribed burn area.

Fire is nature’s recycling system, cycling essential elements that all living things need to survive including carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus between living things such as plants, and the environment such as the soil. (Midpen)

California wildflowers growing in an area where a prescribed burn occurred.

California's native plant community is adapted to and can benefit from fire after evolving over millennia with periodic lightning-caused fires and Native American burning practices to manage the landscape. (Midpen)

Prescribed burning helps reduce encroachment of shrubs and forest into California grasslands, maintaining and enhancing this unique habitat and the rich native plant and wildlife community that live only here. (Midpen)

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