Overview: The Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council (SBCFSC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a mission to unify public and private organizations in Santa Barbara County toveducate, motivate, and coordinate to minimize negative impacts associated with future wildfires. Members of the Board include current and past firefighting professionals, representatives of local government, and citizen representatives from various local communities. The Board holds monthly meetings with the goal to provide relevant information to local citizens and offer a platform for community members to become active participants in the solutions to the challenges fire poses to our wildland urban areas.
The SBCFSC is funded through donations and grants, using these funds to increase wildfire preparedness through education, planning, and mitigation projects. Recent projects include the Lompoc Valley Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), Firewise USA®, Community Chipping, prescribed grazing, educational videos, and Wildfire Preparedness Expositions.
SBCFSC Vision for Landscape Resilience: SBCFSC currently implements the novel Regional Wildfire Mitigation Program (RWMP) which provides a philosophical framework for a focal organization to facilitate a collaborative and holistic approach to wildfire resilience through built environment, landscape, and community programming. The goal for the landscape is to conserve and expand fuel buffers, particularly vegetated greenbelts, to protect communities and critical infrastructure from wildfire. Traditional fuel reduction projects for wildfire mitigation focus on removing or thinning fuels. However, to accomplish the above goal, SBCFSC seeks to focus on a more holistic and nature based approach to wildfire risk mitigation fuels projects. We aim for most of our landscape based mitigation projects to have multiple benefits - soil erosion protection, biodiversity enhancement, ecosystem restoration, food security, environmental justice, workforce training - while planning for project sites to be self-sustaining over time and resilient to future climatic changes. There are several partner organizations doing similar work. The selected candidate will be expected to coordinate with partners to incorporate research into their existing or planned projects to help inform other practitioners and future work. While SBCFSC encourages research, it should be noted that this is not a research dominant position. The primary goal of this position is to implement nature based projects that reduce wildfire risk with a secondary goal of incorporating small, manageable, and cost-effective scientific studies into project plans.
Current Landscape Work: SBCFSC currently manages a chipping, tag and trim, prescribed grazing, and defensible space programs. Additionally, we have some funds for community fuel buffers and habitat restoration. Projects that are accomplishing the above goal have already been started by our partner SIG-NAL. The candidate will be expected to continue maintenance and monitoring of existing sites and continue to seek and implement similar projects.
Position Opening: SBCFSC seeks well-rounded candidates with in-depth experience in applied landscape ecology, research, community outreach, relationship cultivation, and volunteer coordination. The candidate will lead the planning and oversee the implementation of nature based wildfire risk reduction projects for communities and critical infrastructure, incorporate research into existing SBCFSC and partner projects to better inform wildfire mitigation tactics, and provide a strategy for landscape resilience to wildfire. Specifically the candidate will:
Strategic Planning: Conduct geospatial analysis to determine environmental and land-use policy suitability of landscape risk reduction strategies: shaded fuel breaks, orchard buffer rehabilitation, targeted grazing, xeric agriculture, and riparian conservation. Prioritize communities and critical infrastructure for implementation of landscape risk reduction projects. Coordinate with Santa Barbara County to build on existing agricultural geospatial mapping to identify additional vulnerability attributes at the parcel scale (e.g., water source). Partner with Santa Barbara County Fire to conduct prescribed fire suitability/feasibility analysis at the parcel scale.
Project Planning: Actively seek and coordinate with partners and SBCFSC staff to identify locations for landscape risk reduction strategies. Coordinate with landowners on a project plan. Incorporate scientific best practices and use a multi-benefit, climate resilience approach to project plans.
Applied Research: Work with partners to incorporate research into their current and proposed projects. Incorporate research into existing SBCFSC projects. Seek opportunities and coordinate with partners to incorporate research into their risk mitigation projects. Assist with SBCFSC project monitoring.