March 1, 2026 Update:
In January, Napa Communities Firewise Foundation hosted the first CAL FIRE site visit under one of our Forest Health grants, welcoming CAL FIRE Forestry Assistant II Jack Shrimpton to Enchanted Hills and adjacent land.
Joined by Napa Firewise staff, Registered Professional Forester Don Gasser, GIS & Project Manager Peter Lecourt, and ecologist/wildland consultant Carol Rice, the team reviewed completed and in-progress work across 111 unique acres. This initial visit provided an opportunity to assess progress, align on prescriptions, and discuss how ongoing treatments support long-term land resilience.
Work to date includes mulching, hand thinning, piling, burning, and chipping — all guided by prescriptions designed to prepare the land for safer wildfire behavior while strengthening forest health over time. By removing ground and ladder fuels and applying variable-density thinning, these treatments support the development of larger, healthier trees and a more resilient forest structure, including a gradual shift toward a stronger presence of hardwoods.
CAL FIRE shared positive feedback on progress to date and identified opportunities for additional Douglas fir removal in select areas. These recommendations reflect the adaptive nature of this work, as the project team continues to balance ecological benefit, cost, safety, and long-term resilience outcomes as conditions evolve.
We are fortunate that this project benefits from deep local expertise. Don Gasser, the Registered Professional Forester for this effort, brings more than 50 years of experience in
forest management, including authorship of historic Forest Management Plans for the Mayacamas Range and decades of leadership in forest science and education.
Looking ahead, work will continue across Enchanted Hills and adjacent lands, with an RFP in development for additional properties and ongoing coordination with landowners. Together, these efforts reflect a landscape-scale approach to land resilience — restoring ecological function today so Napa County’s forests are better prepared for the fires of tomorrow.
January 2026 Update
Project Begins to Takes Shape on the Ground!
This on-the-ground verification work is foundational: the prescriptions guiding this project are designed not just to reduce fire risk, but to restore forest structure over time — favoring larger, more resilient trees, promoting hardwood development, and building the kind of diverse, fire-adapted forest that handles disturbance better in the long run.
Image to the left shows a hillside area with targeted hand thinning for fuels management.
Environmental compliance review was completed for the majority of treatment components through the CAL VTP Project Specific Analysis process. An amendment was submitted to CAL FIRE to refine treatment boundaries and align the project scope with what crews observed in the field. This kind of adaptive adjustment — ground-truthing the plan against actual conditions — is a normal and important part of responsible forest management.
The Napa Veterans Home / Lighthouse for the Blind Wildfire Resiliency Project — a $6.7 million CAL FIRE Forest Health grant — is moving from planning into the field. During the fall 2025 reporting period, the project team focused on finalizing treatment prescriptions, collecting access road condition data, and confirming operability across treatment areas on the ground.
Work is underway across multiple treatment areas spanning hundreds of acres of private forestland in the Mayacamas Range. Treatments will include mastication, hand thinning, pile burning, chipping, oak woodland restoration, and prescribed fire, sequenced to build on each other over the life of the grant.
September 2025 Update
Active forest treatments are now well underway at the Napa Veterans Home / Lighthouse for the Blind Wildfire Resiliency Project, a $6.7 million CAL FIRE Forest Health grant administered by Napa Firewise.
During the July–September 2025 quarter, two forestry contractors completed work across two sections of the project. Manual thinning, piling, and chipping treatments covered 89 total acres across multiple sections of this project.
To date, the project has treated approximately 160 acres and invested just over $1 million of its total grant toward this landscape-scale effort.
These treatments are designed to do more than reduce fire risk. By removing dense ground and ladder fuels, applying variable-density thinning, and sequencing treatments to build on each other over time, the work is helping shift these forests toward a more resilient structure — larger, more fire-tolerant trees, stronger hardwood presence, and a forest better equipped to survive the fires that will come.
All required environmental compliance approvals are now in place, clearing the path for expanded treatment activity in the months ahead. The project team is currently finalizing contractor selection for additional treatment areas and plans to resume mulching — which was paused during summer due to high heat and dry conditions — as conditions allow.