Wildfire worries have taken a back seat, so far, to the coronavirus pandemic. But Nevada County’s congressman has joined a bi-partisan effort to reduce the risk. Doug LaMalfa says the goal is to streamline forest management, reducing environmental green tape for such things as fuel breaks. Three 75-thousand acre projects are being looked at in the Western United States, including one in California, as a way to minimize those large, catastrophic blazes that have been occurring more in recent years…

LaMalfa stresses there’d be no clear-cutting, which has been the focus of lawsuits by environmental groups. Other notable features of the legislation include reducing utility line hazards, through the installation of more sophisticated detection equipment…

Other features include the establishment of a fire center somewhere in the West, to train new firefighters and forestry professionals on the beneficial uses of prescribed burns. Supporters say that’s a far more cost-effective method of stopping fires than mechanical thinning or firefighting.