Gutierrez

INTRODUCTION

In October 2015, Governor Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. declared a state of emergency in California due to “Tree Mortality.” Record drought conditions over four years had caused epidemic infestations of native bark beetles. According to the United States Forest Service, the infestations caused the death of more than 22 million trees, with the death of 10 million more yet to come. The proclamation establishing the state of emergency warned “this die-off is of such scale that it worsens wildfire risk across large regions of the State, presents life safety risks from falling trees to Californians living in impacted rural, forested communities, and worsens the threat of erosion across watersheds.” The proclamation directed four state agencies to immediately identify “areas of the [s]tate” that represent “high hazard zones” for wildfire and falling trees “using [the] best available science and geospatial data.” Eight years later, in 2023, the state of emergency was still ongoing. In December 2023, Derek J. Gutierrez was arrested for setting a fire in Riverside County near what the parties and witnesses refer to as the Ortega Mountains. A jury convicted him of felony arson of…