Mission Statement

The mission of the Mountain Communities Fire Safe Council is to restore the local forest to health, to reduce the risk of wildfire, and to improve forest habitat conditions.

The process includes public education by several means, homeowner cooperative fire fuels abatement, MCFSC volunteer group work (The Woodies), and contractor-performed abatement.

    Vision Statement 

Over the centuries, we have seen forest fire in North America go from naturally occurring, cool burning, forest maintenance, to catastrophic fires destroying everything in their path. This, while so many opinions exist having to do with the care of the forest and the protection of species that little is accomplished to protect either. 

In observing nature it has become clear that fire is an active and productive part of nature - a natural occurrence. Nature has developed a symbiotic process of maintaining forest health, and almost twenty percent of all plants and trees are dependent on fire to reproduce. The viable habitat for animals depends on it. 

A lack of awareness of this natural process coupled with mans fear and misunderstanding of fire, led to the exclusion of natural fire to the severe detriment of our forests and the habitats they contain. 

The creed of the Mountain Communities Fire Safe Council (MCFSC) is that all forested areas are habitats, and a healthy forest is a healthy habitat. 

The MCFSC believes that at this point, forest recovery requires mechanical thinning to once again achieve near a healthy forty trees per acre followed by prescribed periodic burning at intervals of no more than ten years: A consequence of such naturally occurring, low intensity fires, is that they produce perhaps one ten-thousandth as much smoke and ash as a catastrophic crown fire that destroys the larger trees and causes many health problems. 

The vision of the MCFSC is to both encourage the restoration of the surrounding forest to a park-like environment with abundant plants and animals, and to encourage and educate the public on fuels reduction within communities. It is these actions that will promote fire safety for all.