Fuels and Vegetation Education Program Homepage

Swanton Pacific Ranch's Fuels and Vegetation Education (FAVE) program educates professionals about wildfire fuel mitigation and vegetation management approaches with the goal of increasing the pace and scale of fuels and vegetation management to build a more sustainable and fire resilient landscape for every Californian.

Funded by CALFIRE's Healthy Forest Initiative and the California Climate Initiative, the FAVE program offers webinars and field-based workshops in every corner of California. Our work to date has focused on training participants to improve their understanding of using the California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP) with examples of successful projects in various locations. We have also helped participants to increase their knowledge and skill in the use of prescribed fire. And, we have featured webinars and field training's focused on sharing lessons learned from fuels reductions projects in many different settings.

In the future, we will be featuring more emphasis on fuels reduction projects and prescribed burning. We are excited to offer the California State-Certified Prescribed Fire Burn Boss Training (CARX) as well as pre-requisites. And, we will expand our geographical reach across California to feature leaders in vegetation management and the innovative ways that they approach projects that make ecosystems and Californians more resilient to wildfire.

If you have a project or initiative that you would like us to feature with one of our trainings, please drop us a line with your suggestion.

Want to view recordings of our webinars? Click here for the library of our recordings.

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Upcoming trainings:

January 13th - 17th, 2025: California State-Certified Prescribed Fire Burn Boss (CARX)

This in-person classroom-based course provides information about and develops the skills required for planning and managing prescribed fire on State or private lands.

January 16th, 2025: Cambria Pines Ecological Reserve Restoration and Vegetation Treatment Project

This field training is an opportunity for participants to increase their understanding of a CalVTP project in the Coastal Zone.

January 30th, 2025: CalVTP Q&A: How to make the most of the CalVTP Program EIR

This webinar includes a panel of specialists who will answer your questions about how to prepare Project-Specific Analyses to expedite implementation of treatments including maximizing the usefulness of the CalVTP Program EIR.

February 18 - 22nd, 2025: Basic Wildland Fire Fighter Type 2 Training

This in-person five-day introductory prescribed fire training course will focus on building local capacity for beneficial fire with ecological and cultural objectives. This training Meets the requirements outlined by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) and will incorporate hands-on field scenarios, fireline leadership skills,local fire ecology and fire management.

February 20th, 2025: Public Works Plan in Practice: Lessons Learned from Rancho Rico Community Fuels Treatment Project

This webinar is an opportunity for participants to increase their understanding of how to navigate the Public Works Plan (PWP) to restore forest health in mixed conifer, oak woodland, and coastal redwood forest habitats using ecologically appropriate vegetation treatments to increase wildfire resiliency and community wildfire safety.

February 27th, 2025: Swanton Pacific Ranch: Cal Poly’s School Forest

This field training is an opportunity for participants to increase their understanding of Swanton Pacific Ranch’s (SPR) past and future land management decisions applied to the school forest, their ability to be involved in opportunities at SPR, and their understanding of how to engage with collaborative natural resource management at SPR moving forward.