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This project seeks to reduce fuel loads on built and unbuilt parcels, and to expand and re-treat existing firebreaks in and around the Community of Swall Meadows, Mono County. The small community of 125 habitable structures and roughly 25 unbuilt lots is approximately 900 total acres, surrounded by county, state, federal and private conservation wildlands. 

 

Swall Meadows is particularly vulnerable to wildfire hazards because of a single road leading into and out of the community. In this project we plan to provide resources and incentives for property owners (both built and unbuilt) to improve defensible space, through Chipper Days and financial assistance for landscape clearing. 

 

A second component of the project seeks to protect the community and provide for firefighter safety by doubling the width of 1 fuelbreak that separates the community from wildlands, and re-treating a 2nd fuelbreak that is a critical evacuation route, which also borders wildlands. The vegetation management projects proposed are designed to reduce the potential for GHG emissions by reducing the return intervals, and the acres burned by wildfires, in the long-term.