For years the focus has been on cutting weeds and removing pine needles. Now, fire hazard abatement notices have been “kicked up” a notch to include limbing up your trees and shrubs by removing branches and foliage starting at a minimum of two to three feet off the ground.

Prune and thin overgrown shrubs, native shrubs or planted landscape, including the removal of all dead branches or excessive accumulated leaves or pine needles. This thins out plant material which is easily ignitable and allows a greater probability of survival if the plants were to ignite.

Pruning also includes trimming back and removing overgrown portions of plants that hang down to the ground or near the ground. The photos on this page demonstrate what overgrown manzanita and tree areas look like before and after they are pruned back, thinned out, and trimmed up.

Before picture of overgrown vegetation.

Same property after all the vegetation is chipped. Notice the trees in the foreground? The lower limbs are removed. This makes them more resistant to a ground fire.

In the Big Bear Valley much of the native ground landscape is covered with Manzanita. To make properties more resistant to ground fires people are removing the dead branches and limbs and removing the lower branches that could easily burn.