See Progress on Protecting People and Communities from Wildfire
From day one, Governor Gavin Newsom declared community protection and wildfire resilience a top priority of his administration. California and its partners continue to deliver nation-leading results. Since taking office, the Governor has committed more resources and investments than ever before to significantly boost wildfire response capabilities while tackling the root causes of the wildfire crisis head-on.
Here are the top 5 things to know about California’s progress on protecting communities and landscapes from wildfire:
1. Historic Investments Making Big Impacts Statewide
- Invested $6 billion: Collectively, Task Force partners have increased wildfire resilience investments to more than $6 billion, with state investments surging to more than $4 billion since 2021.
- Doubled CAL FIRE resources: To support more effective wildfire response, CAL FIRE nearly doubled its fire protection staff since 2019 from 5,829 to 11,436 positions, and nearly doubled its fire protection budget from $2 billion to $3.8 billion.
- Added 2,400 firefighters: The Governor’s proposed investments will add 2,400 new firefighters to CAL FIRE’s firefighting force over the next five years.
- Boosted Cal OES: Since 2019, the budget of the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), a key agency in responding to and rebuilding after fires, increased from $1.8 billion to $4.5 billion.
2. Moving Faster without Compromising Environmental Protections
- Fast-tracking wildfire projects: Thanks to the Governor’s March 2025 emergency proclamation on wildfire, California has fast-tracked 300 projects in 300 days through a streamlined permitting system, with projects now being approved in as little as 30 days, saving a year or more of review and red tape for more complicated projects.
- Moving at record pace to support wildfire recovery: Immediately following the devastating Los Angeles firestorms, the Governor issued an executive order to suspend CEQA and Coastal Act permitting requirements to enable homeowners and businesses to rebuild without undue delay.
- Accelerating the use of good fire: In October 2025, the Governor signed an executive order to reduce red tape and expand tools to safely deploy beneficial fire projects. In the same month, the U.S. EPA issued policy guidance directing regional offices to work with local, state, tribal, and federal partners to remove barriers for prescribed fire.
3. Scaling Up Protection for Communities Facing Increasing Wildfire Risks
- Funding wildfire prevention at record-levels: Since 2019, CAL FIRE has awarded more than $570 million for more than 560 wildfire prevention projects across the state. Since 2023, the U.S. Forest Service has awarded more than $150 million across California to plan for and mitigate wildfire risk through community wildfire defense grants.
- Protecting structures and creating defensible space: CAL FIRE conducts defensible space inspections on more than 250,000 homes each year. In February 2025, Governor Newsom signed an executive order to further improve community hardening and wildfire mitigation, including accelerating Zone Zero regulations.
- Communities working together with nation-leading results: California leads the nation with more than 1,500 local Firewise USA communities.
4. On the Ground in California's Wildlands: Unprecedented Results in Record Time
- Launched more than 2,000 projects: California’s historic investments continue to pay off. State agencies have conducted over 2,000 landscape health and fire prevention projects.
- Treated more than 3.7 million acres: Collectively, Task Force partners treated over 3.7 million activity acres with state, federal, and local partners between 2021 and 2024, including over 1 million activity acres of treatments across 733,000 footprint acres in 2024.
- Nearly doubled prescribed fire: Prescribed fire treatments nearly doubled since 2021, with interagency partners now treating roughly 200,000 acres annually.
- Supported tribal stewardship: In September 2024, Governor Newsom signed SB 310, which supports tribal sovereignty by enabling California Native American tribes to conduct cultural burns on ancestral territories. In March 2025, the Karuk Tribe and the California Natural Resources Agency entered into a landmark cultural burning agreement as part of SB 310.
- Created emergency teams: State and federal partners have established 15 Emergency Forest Restoration Teams (EFRTs) across the state to rapidly restore private forestlands after fires.
- Awarded $620 million to forest health: Since 2021, CAL FIRE has committed more than $620 million in support of 120 wildfire and forest resilience projects through its Forest Health Grant Program.
- Built local capacity: The Department of Conservation’s Regional Forest and Fire Capacity (RFFC) program has awarded more than $140 million to communities across the state to create fire-adapted communities and landscapes.
5. Leveraging Technology to Increase Transparency and Improve Wildfire Prevention and Response
- Innovative tools for tracking progress: In 2023, the Task Force launched an Interagency Treatment Dashboard to display completed federal, state, local, and private vegetation management projects across the state. The Dashboard, provides transparency, tracks progress, facilitates planning, and informs firefighting efforts.
- Documenting effectiveness: CAL FIRE’s Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard spotlights and documents how recent wildfire resilience projects are protecting communities and landscapes when wildfire strikes.
- First-ever statewide LiDAR maps: In December 2025, California released the state’s first-ever statewide LiDAR maps, providing data on forest and vegetation conditions, enabling tribes, researchers, land managers, and community partners to incorporate the free data products into their own tools, models, and planning processes to inform wildfire resilience projects.
- Utilizing cutting-edge technology for fire response: CAL FIRE and Cal OES have also invested heavily in drones, satellite technology for advanced mapping, and AI-powered tools to spot fires quicker, and a Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS) to provide real-time mapping of wildfires. Additionally, CAL FIRE partnered with UC San Diego to support the development of ALERTCalifornia which utilizes AI to identify and monitor wildfires. ALERTCalifornia was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023.
USDA California Climate Hub Provides Forestry Resource Repository for Land Managers
New Website Provides Forestry Resource Repository for Land Managers
January 8, 2025 – The USDA California Climate Hub released a new webpage that compiles datasets and decision-support tools to help land managers and natural resource professionals with assessing the conditions of a landscape for project planning. The list is not exhaustive of all resources but focuses on data and tools available to the public, with an emphasis on resources available within the state of California. The repository also contains a series of factsheets, produced by the USDA California Climate Hub, that offer a succinct overview of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Regional Resource Kits and its constituent products.
Survey Open to Collect Input from Landowners on Prescribed Burning
Survey Open to Collect Input from Landowners on Prescribed Burning
In collaboration with the University of California Cooperative Extension, Pennsylvania State University is conducting a survey to better understand private landowner perspectives and potential intentions to use planned burning in California. The objectives of this project are to:
•Evaluate private forest landowners’ attitudes towards prescribed fire in California.
•Identify barriers and opportunities for prescribed fire adoption in the state.
•Develop tailored support strategies for California landowners.
•Assess the influence of policy and environmental factors on prescribed fire use in California.
U.S. Forest Service Thinning Projects Protect Southern California Communities
U.S. Forest Service Thinning Projects Protect Southern California Communities
November 13, 2024 – Two of this year’s larger fires in Southern California, the Line Fire and the Bridge Fire, demonstrated how fuels treatments protect communities and natural landscapes. The Line Fire was fueled by high winds and steep terrain and quickly spread toward the community of Angelus Oaks. Luckily for firefighters defending Angelus Oaks, previous wildfire mitigation work in San Bernardino National Forest, including prescribed fire and mechanical thinning, enabled firefighters to suppress the wildfire before it was able to burn through Angelus Oaks.
A few days later, the Bridge Fire was heading toward the community of Wrightwood but first hit Forest Service fuel breaks, where trees had been thinned out five years prior. When the fire reached the fuel breaks, fire behavior altered, slowed, and allowed firefighters to contain the blazes before the fire could reach the 5,000 residents of Wrightwood. These success stories on the importance of preventive treatments build on effectiveness reporting by CAL FIRE and other Task Force partners that are doing the proactive work to protect landscapes and communities before wildfire strikes.
California Public Seed Banks Complete Historic Cone Collection Year
California Public Seed Banks Complete Historic Cone Collection Year
December 5, 2024 – California’s two public seed banks collected a total of 11,330 bushels of conifer seed-bearing cones in 2024. The U.S. Forest Service Placerville Nursery collected 6,700 bushels and CAL FIRE’s L.A. Moran Reforestation Center collected 4,630 bushels. 30% of the bushels collected in 2024 were supported by the California Reforestation Pipeline Partnership which helped increase cone collection in public seed banks in 2024 by 275% from the total collected in 2023. In addition to public seed banks, voluntarily reported private sector seed collection in California totaled 8,670 bushels which brings the statewide total to at least 20,000 bushels which could potentially reforest as much as 681,000 acres.
State Coastal Conservancy Awards Nearly $6 Million For Wildfire Resilience Projects
State Coastal Conservancy Awards Nearly $6 Million For Wildfire Resilience Projects
- $250,000 to support Civicorps’ East Bay Wildfire Risk Reduction project for workforce development and vegetation removal in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.
- $1,542,000 for the San Mateo County Critical Evacuation Corridors Wildfire Resilience Project to remove hazardous vegetation along two critical road evacuation corridors.
- $500,000 to implement the Garland Ranch Wildfire Resilience Project to thin 12 acres of eucalyptus trees and create a 6.2 acre shaded fuel break, maintain previously treated areas, collect data, and conduct community engagement in Monterey County.
- $1,626,000 to the U.S. Forest Service to treat approximately 24 miles of historic fuel breaks by removing vegetation along the Santa Lucia ridge line within the Los Padres National Forest to protect neighboring communities in Monterey County from catastrophic wildfire.
- $947,850 for Santa Barbara’s Wildfire Resilience Project to reduce wildland vegetation fuels acres, restore native species, and conduct community engagement.
- $1,131,700 for the Ascot Hills Resilience Project in Los Angeles to enhance 33 acres of habitat through the removal of invasive plants and planting of native plants to increase wildfire resilience.
RESOURCES
Federal Funds Reduce Wildfire Risk and Support Local Economies
Federal Funds Reduce Wildfire Risk and Support Local Economies
Federal Funds Support Wildfire Impacted Communities:
November 15, 2024 – Governor Newsom announced that five communities hit hardest by the devastating wildfires in 2018 will receive $40.7 million in new federal aid to support community development and help communities reach full economic recovery. This funding will reach communities that are still recovering from the economic and mental health impacts of wildfires and demonstrates the importance of continued support for disaster-impacted communities, even years after initial disaster relief has concluded. The funding comes from the federal 2018 Community Development Block Grant—Disaster Recovery Workforce Development program and will go to communities in the counties of Butte, Lake, Los Angeles, Shasta, and Ventura.
USFS Awards Over $7 Million to Reduce Wildfire Risk and Support Local Economies in California:
November 13, 2024 – The U.S. Forest Service awarded $20 million to transport hazardous fuels from forests to facilities for processing into wood products or energy sources. These awards fund 66 projects in 13 states, including nearly $7.3 million for 12 projects in California. Awarded projects will increase the pace and scale of wildfire resilience treatments and provide economic benefits to local communities and businesses. Projects will support critical wood products industries and underserved communities by providing jobs in rural areas that may be impacted by mill closures.
U.S. Forest Service Completes Record Setting Year for Prescribed Fire
U.S. Forest Service Completes Record Setting Year for Prescribed Fire
November 20, 2024 — The U.S. Forest Service successfully treated over 325,000 acres for forest health on national forests in California during the 2024 fiscal year. This includes over 72,000 acres of prescribed burning alone. The previous U.S. Forest Service record for prescribed fire was set in 2018 when 63,711 acres were treated. This marks significant progress toward the USFS target of deploying 150,000 acres of beneficial fire in California’s Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire.
California Passes Proposition 4 — Providing $1.5 Billion for Wildfire Resilience
California Passes Proposition 4 — Providing $1.5 Billion for Wildfire Resilience
November 5, 2024 – Californians passed Proposition 4, the first-ever climate bond to go before California voters. The proposition provides $10 billion in bond funds for critical wildfire, flood protection, and other climate resilience projects around the state, including $1.5 billion for wildfire resilience. This funding will enable agencies to improve landscape health and resilience and protect communities from wildfire risks through programs such as the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program. The funding also includes $50 million for long-term capital infrastructure projects that utilize wildfire mitigation waste for non-combustible uses.
In addition to funding wildfire resilience, $1.2 billion will be used to protect natural lands and preserve biodiversity, with $870 million directed to the Wildlife Conservation Board to help the state to meet its goal to protect 30% of lands by 2030. The approval of Proposition 4 is a major advancement for California’s efforts to increase the pace and scale of wildfire and landscape resilience treatments, adapt to a changing climate, and reach goals set in the California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan.
CAL FIRE & USFS Investments Confront California’s Wildfire Crisis & Expand Urban Forests
CAL FIRE & USFS Investments Confront California’s Wildfire Crisis & Expand Urban Forests
October 17 – USFS Invests $15 Million to Confront California’s Wildfire Crisis
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced $100 million will be invested in 21 new projects to expand work on the USFS Wildfire Crisis Strategy to reduce the threat of wildfire in high-risk areas across the country. $15 million will fund three projects in California helping further Task Force goals of protecting communities in the Wildland Urban Interface.
- Sequoia National Forest – $5 million to reduce wildfire risk to the Breckenridge and Pine Flat communities through thinning and prescribed fire, with wood byproducts going to a biomass facility or the local sawmill when viable.
- Eldorado National Forest – $5 million for hazardous fuels reduction, strategic fuels breaks, and prescribed fire on the Georgetown Divide. The project will also create strategic fuel breaks near residential and commercial infrastructure in Volcanoville and Georgetown, including a high-powered electric transmission line.
- Tahoe National Forest – $5 million to reduce hazardous fuels, create defensible space around six communities, create safe ingress and egress along 6.3 miles of road, and engage at least seven partner groups, including local tribes.
September 20 – CAL FIRE and USFS Award $31 million to 22 Urban Forestry Projects in California
CAL FIRE and USFS announced nearly $31 million in Urban and Community Forestry grants in California focused on urban forestry topics of management, expansion and improvement, education, workforce development, capacity building, and green schoolyards. The projects are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve the functionality of urban forests, arrest the decline of urban forest resources, address climate change resilience, improve the quality of the environment in urban areas, and increase access to environmental career pathways. All funded projects will directly serve priority populations within one or more defined disadvantaged and/or low-income communities in an urban area.
CAL FIRE Forest Health Research Grant Program: Applications are now open for the Forest Health Research Program which is offering $4 million in research funding through its FY 2024-2025 grant solicitation. These grants will support research that directly benefits landowners, resource agencies, fire management organizations, and decision-makers throughout the state.