Prescribed Fire Services
Nevada City
Restore Balance with “Good Fire” on Your Land!
For thousands of years, humans have used prescribed fire as a powerful tool for renewal and protection. Today, as catastrophic wildfires increase across Nevada County, Nevada City, and Grass Valley, reintroducing good fire is more important than ever.
What Is Prescribed Fire?
Prescribed burning is the intentional and controlled application of fire to a landscape under specific conditions. This practice reduces hazardous fuels, improves forest health, and restores the natural fire cycle that our ecosystems depend on.
Our skilled prescribed fire practitioners (aka Burn Bosses) are trained and State Certified in Prescribed-Fire (CARx). We work with landowners, CalFire, and local air districts to plan and implement safe, permitted, effective burns across a range of fuel types and property sizes.
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Types of Prescribed Burning
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Broadcast Burning
Fire is applied across the landscape to consume fine fuels and thin dense understory vegetation, improving forest structure and habitat health. -
Pile Burning
After selective thinning or clearing, woody debris is gathered into piles, cured, and burned under safe, moist conditions to reduce fuel loading.
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Benefits of Prescribed Fire
Prescribed fire offers many ecological and practical benefits that mechanical methods can’t replicate:
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Reduces wildfire risk by decreasing fuel accumulation
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Restores soil health and cycles nutrients through natural ash deposition
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Controls invasive species and promotes native plant growth
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Improves forest resilience by thinning overgrown stands
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Cost-effective land management with long-term results
In our Mediterranean climate, summers are hot and dry — creating a brittle landscape where decomposition is slow. Fire acts as nature’s decomposer, consuming dead vegetation, returning nutrients, and keeping ecosystems in balance.
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Prescribed fire can be a highly cost effective method of protecting your property and it offers many additional ecological benefits that other methods do not.
Fire is an essential ingredient in our brittle climate where our summers are hot and dry and opportunities for biological decomposition are minimal. While we do receive an abundance of precipitation through the winter, unfortunately, this does not coincide with enough warmth to encourage sufficient fungal decomposition to keep pace with the annual accumulation of dead vegetation. Fire largely replaces biological decomposition in this climate.
Fire consumes dead vegetation, creating ash and stable carbon while reducing fuel loading across the landscape. Whereas mechanical treatments such as broadcast chipping and mastication are very effective at rearranging vegetation, they often leave excessive dead fuel accumulations spread across the landscape which can still burn intensely during a wildfire and often remain in place for over a decade after the treatment.
Why Work with First Rain Land Stewardship
Our team has deep experience applying prescribed burns in Nevada County and the Sierra Nevada foothills. We maintain close coordination with regulatory agencies, local fire districts, and community partners to ensure safety and compliance. We also stay nimble — ready to mobilize when the right weather and fuel conditions arise.
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Many landscapes haven’t burned in over a century. The result: overcrowded forests, unhealthy trees, and extreme levels of forest litter. Implementing a prescribed burn on your property is one of the most powerful steps you can take toward restoring ecological balance and protecting your home.
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After an initial burn, we recommend a fire return interval of every 5–10 years to maintain open, healthy, and fire-resilient land.