A forestry worker thins a forest in an effort to prevent large forest fires.

(stockstudioX/Getty Images)

At a Glance

A new Cal Fire report identified 35 fuel-reduction projects.The projects are aimed at protecting more than 200 vulnerable communities.However, these projects will not prevent all wildfire danger in California.

California fire officials have released a report recommending 35 fuel-reduction projects to thin vegetation in nearly 147 square miles of state forests, which will help keep more than 200 vulnerable communities safer.

In response to the deadliest and most destructive back-to-back fire seasons, during which more than 150 people died and tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in January directing the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) to recommend actions to help , according to the 28-page report.

Newsom put an emphasis on "pursuing a strategic approach where necessary actions are focused on California's most vulnerable communities as a prescriptive and deliberative endeavor to realize the greatest returns on reducing risk to life and property."

Cal Fire emphasized that while forest thinning and the creation of fire breaks can help reduce fire severity, wind-driven wildfire events that destroy lives and property will very likely still occur.

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To prioritize areas where vegetation would be thinned, Cal Fire considered the socioeconomic characteristics of the communities that needed to be protected, including data on poverty levels, residents with disabilities, language barriers, residents over 65 or under 5 years of age and households without a car.

The Woolsey Fire approaches homes on Nov. 9, 2018 in Malibu, California.

(David McNew/Getty Images)

“California is increasingly at risk of wildfire, and certain populations are particularly vulnerable given the location of their communities and socioeconomic factors such as age and lack of mobility. The tragic loss of lives and property in the town of Paradise during last year’s Camp Fire ,” Cal Fire Director Thom Porter said in a press release, referring to the state's deadliest wildfire, which destroyed much of the community of 27,000 people in November 2018.

The priority projects include areas near Big Sur, Orinda, Aptos, Woodside and Los Gatos. Also included are areas near the city of Redding, which was devastated by the deadly Carr Fire last year, and in Butte County, where Paradise is located.

Some at-risk areas like Sonoma and Napa counties and much of Southern California are excluded from the report because the focus is on higher-elevation, forested lands, Chad Hanson, an ecologist who researches fire recovery with the John Muir Project, told weather.com.

"It explicitly excludes communities that are not in forests, but the majority of the most at-risk communities in California are in grasslands, chaparral, and oak woodlands, not forests," he said.

Hanson said he thinks Cal Fire should focus on helping homeowners in the designated forests make their homes firesafe and help them "conduct defensible space pruning of vegetation within 100 feet of homes – actions that have been scientifically proven to save the great majority of homes even in intense fire."

"Cal Fire instead proposes mostly large commercial logging projects in wildlands under the deceptive euphemisms of 'fuel breaks' and 'thinning.' The most comprehensive scientific studies, including my own research, concludes that logging usually makes fires burn hotter and faster," he told weather.com.

(MORE: What Survivors, Officials Said After Devastating Camp, Woolsey Fires)

Hanson said he believes the governor should reject the proposal and "focus on creating firesafe communities, not industrial logging in remote forests."

An aerial view of homes destroyed by the Camp Fire on Feb. 11, 2019 in Paradise, California.

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

"The report specifically promotes logging of large, mature trees along with exemptions from environmental laws to facilitate that, despite a decades-long consensus among fire ecologists that removal of fire-resistant mature trees increases fire intensity," said Hanson. "Instead of focusing on proven approaches to save homes and lives, the Cal Fire report instead proposes a dangerously misguided gift to the logging industry."

While some other critics say Cal Fire did not go far enough, the agency only oversees about one-third of the 23,500 square miles of California forests that are in poor health, and much of that is privately owned. The other two-thirds of the forests are federally managed.

"It’s not like the (U.S.) Forest Service or the (National) Park Service know where they can go and ," LeRoy Westerling, a climate scientist who studies wildfires at the University of California Merced, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It’s a much bigger challenge to build relationships and work across communities. And not every landowner has the training, the resources or the will to manage their land."

Cal Fire pointed out that while the recommendations in the report are significant, they are only part of the solution: "Additional efforts around protecting lives and property through home hardening and other measures must be vigorously pursued by government and stakeholders at all levels concurrently with the pursuit of the recommendations in this report."

"California needs an all-of-the-above approach to protect public safety and improve the health of our forest ecosystems," Porter said.

(MORE: Forest Service Announces Tree Toll of 2018 Wildfires)

More than 25 million acres in California are classified as under a very high or extreme fire threat, which covers about half the state. Cal Fire pointed out that while wildfires are a "natural part of California's landscape," the state's fire season has started earlier and ended later in recent years, driven by climate change. The Sierra fire season has lengthened some 75 days.

"Climate change, an epidemic of dead and dying trees, and the proliferation of new homes in the wildland urban interface (WUI) magnify the threat and place substantially more people and property at risk than in preceding decades," according to the report.

Cal Fire said it is calling on the state's National Guard to help execute the projects, which are more than double the fuel-reduction projects they typically do in a year.

Cal Fire Deputy Chief Scott McLean told the Associated Press it was the first time he could recall that the National Guard would help clear trees and vegetation.

"It just goes to show you how committed everybody is," he said.