News of the Zone 0 fire mandate rulemaking from Zone 0 Watchdog
Cutting through the politics and pseudoscience of California’s “Zone 0” defensible-space mandate.
California’s proposed Zone 0 regulation would strip all vegetation within five feet of every home in the state’s fire zones — a blanket rule based not on ecological fire science but on insurance modeling and political expedience.
The Zone 0 Report exists to fill a critical information gap. Here you’ll find clear, evidence-based reporting on the science, legislation, and industry forces shaping this policy — and real solutions that protect both homes and habitats.
The Zone 0 Watchdogs investigate the science, the legislation, and the economics behind this regulation - and uplift real solutions that protect homes and neighborhoods.
Email to 30x30 Coalition
12/19/25
Subject: While We Celebrate 30x30, Nature Is Being Erased at Home
Dear Colleagues,
Many of you are on this list because you care deeply about California’s commitment to 30x30—the effort to expand our public lands. That goal matters. Protecting large landscapes is essential.
But there is a growing contradiction we can no longer ignore.
While we celebrate the protection of distant open space, nature is being systematically removed from our own neighborhoods—from the very places where most Californians live, where children encounter nature for the first time, and where urban wildlife still exists.
The Shift from Active Firefighting to Zone 0
California’s wildfire crisis didn’t just produce new fire science — it produced a new governing model. Under the banner of “Zone 0,” the state has quietly shifted wildfire defense from public agencies to individual homeowners, mandating the removal of living landscapes around millions of homes while offering no corresponding reduction in taxes, regulation, or risk. Framed as “science-based,” Zone 0 instead reflects a deeper pattern in California policy: expanding mandates paired with privatized responsibility, where ecosystems, neighborhoods, and homeowners absorb the cost of institutional failure. What Zone 0 really represents isn’t fire resilience — it’s the quiet privatization of fire defense.
News & Updates
Stay current on legislative hearings, rule revisions, and city resolutions opposing or modifying Zone 0. Monthly digests summarize new research, agency developments, and Zone 0 Watchdog responses. Featured articles and a record of our ongoing engagement with policymakers, and the public agency. These articles and comment letters challenge misinformation, expose hidden influences, and advocate for wildfire strategies grounded in fire ecology, not fear.
Zone 0, Evidence, and Uncertainty: What UCLA’s Scientists Say We Know—and Don’t Know—About the 5-Foot Ember-Resistant Zone
December 12, 2025
In this UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge webinar, researchers from across disciplines step back from the “soundbite science” that has dominated the Zone 0 debate and ask a more careful question: what does the strongest real-world evidence actually show about the drivers of home loss—especially in the first five feet around a structure? The panel emphasizes that much of what has been presented publicly relies on simplified demonstrations or anecdotal case reports, while post-fire statistical studies often find that plant effects are complex, context-dependent, and frequently outweighed by factors like building density, structure-to-structure ignition pathways, and combustible materials such as fences, mulch, dead debris, and clogged gutters. Across the discussion, a consistent theme emerges: there is broad agreement on practical, near-term actions (removing known combustibles, reducing dead material, and hardening homes), but far less scientific consensus supporting a one-size-fits-all mandate to eliminate all live plants and significantly reducing tree canopy within five feet—particularly given tradeoffs with urban heat, water, and slope stability, and the reality that California is making consequential policy decisions in a zone of uncertainty.
The Death of Active Firefighting
December 8, 2025
There is a moment in the YouTube documentary Abandoned—tucked between the shaky phone videos of burning rooftops and the interviews with stunned homeowners—where the entire story comes into focus. A resident leans over a backyard pool, filling a bucket while his friend drags burning debris off a fence. Not a single firefighter is in sight.
“Where are they?” he asks the camera. “There was absolutely nobody there,” another neighbor repeats. “Not a single truck.”
Coalition stands with Los Angeles City Council’s unanimous vote rejecting one-size-fits-all vegetation removal regulations
October 14, 2025
LOS ANGELES, CA — Homeowner and resident organizations from across the City of Los Angeles’ most fire-prone neighborhoods, representing thousands of households, have submitted a joint letter to the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (BOF) opposing the proposed Zone 0 Defensible Space regulations..
Zone 0 and the Death of Local Control: Sacramento’s Fire Experiment in Our Yards
October 16, 2025
On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1455, authorizing the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to impose new “Zone 0” regulations—the so-called ember-resistant zone—within five feet of every structure in California in the very high fire hazard severity zones.
How the Insurance Industry Quietly Rewrote California’s Fire Policy
July, 2025
When California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara appeared on KGO-TV’s ABC 7 News, he promised to “stabilize the insurance market” and “get this done within one year.” His new “Sustainable Insurance Strategy,” he said, would bring insurers back to wildfire-prone areas and lower premiums for homeowners. But as reporter Stephanie Sierra pressed him on-air, Lara’s plan revealed something else entirely: a massive concession to the insurance industry —