On Tuesday, October 8th, participants of ranging ages and backgrounds joined a tour hosted by the Butte County Collaborative Groups (BCCG) series in an informative hike over Bald Rock in Berry Creek. In 2020, the forest around Bald Rock and throughout Berry Creek was decimated during the catastrophic North Complex wildfire. While observing the post fire landscape of dead trees, brush, and piled logs, participants of the tour discussed topics of forest regeneration and maintenance, like the need to prune the immature oak trees down to central leader branches.
Guest speaker Jedidiah Brown of the Berry Creek Tyme Maidu shared the relevance and importance of Bald Rock as a sacred site for his tribe. He also described the work that the tribe’s crew is undertaking for forest restoration and wildfire mitigation, highlighting the benefits of prescribed burns (“good fire”) for the community’s ongoing management of brush overgrowth and dead vegetation.
Future reforestation efforts are projected to occur around the Lake Madrone community, thanks to the BCFSC’s CAL FIRE Forest Health grant. This project will entail collaboration between multiple organizations, including Chico State Enterprise, the Berry Creek Tyme Maidu tribe, and BCFSC.
Participants of the tour represented a multitude of organizations, including the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu, Enterprise Rancheria, CAL FIRE, Department of Water Resources, Butte County Resource Conservation District, Chico State Enterprises, and Butte County Fire Safe Council.
To join a future tour of the BCCG check out the hub site at: https://butte-county-collaborative-group-bcrcd.hub.arcgis.com/