January 3, 2023 - Just over one year after receiving funding from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC), the Mariposa County Fire Safe Council and partners completed the Wagner Ridge Fuel Break Project, which expanded and widened a critical shaded fuel break between two vital watersheds that will help with future firefighting efforts.

The SNC’s south-central area representative and the executive director of the Mariposa County Fire Safe Council point out the strategic location and the many associated benefits of the Wagner Ridge Fuel Break Project.

“It provides a strategic fuel break that protects forest health in both the Merced and Tuolumne River watersheds,” said Michael Pickard, SNC’s south-central area representative. “The Fire Safe Council has generated a 400-foot-wide shaded fuel break to provide firefighter access and a defendable anchor point for any suppression activities that might need to happen here.”

Although a shaded fuel break in and of itself may not stop a wildfire, it does create a place where firefighters can safely work and potentially halt a fire from jumping from one watershed into the other. Located strategically on a ridge between the Tuolumne River and the Merced River, and two watersheds with fairly steep slopes and dense forests, the 6.5-mile-long shaded fuel break will not only help protect nearby communities, but two vital water sources.

Strategically located on a ridge separating the Merced River and Tuolumne River watersheds, the Wagner Ridge Fuel Break Project expanded and widened a shaded fuel break to 400 feet to help with future firefighting efforts.

“The key thing about Wagner Ridge is that it’s the dividing line between two really critical watersheds and that is the watershed for the Merced River and the watershed for the Tuolumne River,” said Barbara Cone, executive director for the Mariposa County Fire Safe Council. “Both of those watersheds go into two significant lakes in the Central Valley and the water feeds the agriculture and the cities down below and so these watersheds are very critical to Central California.”
Source: Sierra Nevada Conservancy