The San Mateo County Parks Wildfire Mitigation Program aims to reduce wildfire risks, enhance fire suppression capabilities, and promote forest health in our parks, focusing primarily on residential border areas known as the wildland-urban interface. The 2025 Wildfire Mitigation Program updates the previously adopted 2021 Wildfire Fuel Management Program.
The initiative targets approximately 2,750 acres for fuel reduction, forest health treatments, and improvements to fire-related infrastructure. Through a variety of projects the Parks Department will:
- Minimize live and dead fuels to hinder fire behavior, including flame height, spread, and intensity, while mitigating the tree death, smoke, and soil heating that result from wildfire.
- Decrease the horizontal and vertical continuity of fuels, particularly ladder fuels which allow ground fire to climb into the canopy.
- Reduce the density of live or dead trees, which decreases the potential intensity of wildfire.
- Enable firefighters to better respond to incidents in parks and perform essential fire suppression and containment tasks.
- Protect and enhance entry and exit routes for first responders, residents, and park visitors.
- Improve forest health and ecosystem resilience by reducing the impacts of invasive species, competition for resources, disease, drought, and wildfire. Discover what a healthy forest looks like
Program Description
Webinars
- August 26, 2025 webinar
- April 8, 2021 webinar
- June 10, 2021 webinar
- February 10, 2022 Coastside Meeting
Funding
Funding to implement work within identified in the program is through San Mateo County’s Measure K and grants.
Learn More
Past Projects
Edgewood Park
Create and Maintain a Shaded Fuel Break along the Eastern & Southeastern Boundary
Huddart Park
Huddart Park Forest Health & Fuel Reduction Project
Re-treatment of Kings Mountain Road Fuel Break
Memorial Park Fuel Reduction
Creating a shaded fuel break along Pescadero Creek Road and Wurr Road in Memorial Park.
Pillar Point Bluff
Fuel Reduction near Pillar Ridge Complex
Quarry Park Fuel Reduction
Numerous new and ongoing projects to enhance forest health and increase safety to nearby communities by reducing wildfire fuel in Quarry Park.
Sam McDonald Fuel Reduction
Maintaining existing fuel breaks and shaded fuel breaks along a 4.3-mile network of fire roads in Sam McDonald Park.
San Bruno Mountain Park
Create and Maintain a Shaded Fuel Break from Crocker Entrance and Guadalupe Canyon Parkway – Daly City
Saddle Loop Gorse Removal
Wunderlich Park
Wunderlich Park Forest Health & Fuel Reduction Project