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Attached are the latest (April 6-May 2) WRP Natural Resources Committee related updates for your reference and use. If you have any related updates you would like to share with the Committee, please email them to amyduffy@westernregionalpartnership.org for the next update.

WWDL provides free public access to digital collections of significant primary and secondary resources on water in the western United States. These collections have been made available by research libraries belonging to the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and other academic library partners. The WWDL is a valuable resource for researchers, policy makers, scholars, Native American tribes, professionals working in various fields, and others interested in contemporary and historic water issues.

Presentation by Lowell Ballard to the NM Forest and Watershed Management Coordinating Group, July 26, 2019

An unprecedented 40-year experiment in a 40,000 acre valley of Yosemite National Park strongly supports the idea that managing fire, rather than suppressing it, makes wilderness areas more resilient to fire, with the added benefit of increased water availability and resistance to drought. After a three-year assessment of the Park's Illilouette Creek Basin, UC Berkeley researchers concluded that a strategy dating to 1973 of managing wildfires with minimal suppression and almost no prescribed burns has created a landscape more resistant to catastrophic fire, with more diverse vegetation, forest structure and increased water storage. "When fire is not suppressed, you get all these benefits: increased stream flow, increased downstream water availability, increased soil moisture, which improves habitat for the plants in the watershed. And it increases the drought resistance of the remaining trees and also increases the fire resilience because you have created these natural firebreaks," said Gabrielle Boisramé, graduate student at UC Berkeley's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and first author of the study. The Cohesive Wildland Fire Strategy supports management of fires where possible. Managing fires is part of the Cohesive Strategy vision: to safely and effectively suppress fires, use fire where allowable, manage our natural resources, and as a Nation, live with wildland fire. Read the full article and find the published study at: ttp://wildfireinthewest.blogspot.com/2016/10/wildfire-management-vs-suppression.html.

Forest Stewards Guild flyer. Handout at April 21, 2017 Coordinating Group meeting.