By Calli-Jane West
Executive Advisor, Butte County Fire Safe Council
The Butte County Fire Safe Council’s (BCFSC) Chipper Program has been providing wildfire safety vegetation chipping with its no-cost services for more than 20 years. It was the Council’s first program and has been integral to our mission to provide wildfire safety mitigation, education, and recovery.
The program has a diverse design in its ability to assist in fire safety, prevention, and education by encouraging residents to reduce hazardous fuels around homes, roads, and property.
In 2003, we started the Chipper Program in the Concow and Yankee Hill area as a creative response to multiple catastrophic wildfires. The devastating impact that wildfires had in Butte County during the Lightning Complex of 1999, the Concow Fire of 2000, and the Poe Fire of 2001 was evidence that structures with thick brush and trees around them were a recipe for disaster. With significant loss of homes, life, and forest cover, BCFSC’s first Executive Director, Brenda Rightmyer, worked with residents to pilot the Chipper Program.
By encouraging community members to clear defensible space around their homes and providing a way to chip the cut material at no cost to landowners, BCFSC offers an effective service that has been used in all of Butte County’s WUI communities for two decades.
Success stories of the program helping save people’s homes were evident in the 2008 Lightning Complex Fire, 2018 Camp Fire, and 2024 Park Fire.
The program has been a resilient solution by providing an alternative to burning and reducing miles traveled to the landfill for vegetation disposal, and continues to service the Butte County community. Chipper funding comes primarily from competitive grants, which often experience delays in funding cycles. Despite that, the BCFSC has successfully run the Chipper Program each year since its pilot in 2003. Overall, the council has fulfilled roughly 2,500 service requests for chipping hazardous vegetation around homes and along access roads across the wildfire-prone ridge communities of Butte County.
As the Chipper Program moves into its 21st year of providing free wildfire safety resources for residents in Butte County, we want to hear from you! How has the Chipper Program helped you in your wildfire safety goals? Email us at Chipper@buttefiresafe.net to share your Chipper success story.
Learn more and enroll for the Chipper Program on our Chipper Program Page.
