A firefighter tends to a prescribed burn on UCSB's Lagoon Island in 2011.
If you see smoke and flames coming from Lagoon Island one day during the week of July 21-27, don’t be alarmed. A prescribed burn is scheduled for that week, to be conducted by UC Santa Barbara’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration (CCBER), the UCSB Fire Protection Division, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, and the county's Arson Task Force.
Lisa Stratton, director of ecosystem management at CCBER, said in a UCSB Office of Public Affairs press release that the burn will be part of an ecological restoration of the area, and will be done on a day with the least amount of fog. "The burn is part of a management effort to control non-native grasses and establish native coastal bluff scrub vegetation," she said in the release.
It will be the fifth year the university will be conducting a burn, and all needed permits have been secured.
For more information, read the Office of Public affairs press release.