Program Description: CAL FIRE created Wildfire Resilience Block Grants in 2022 to build local capacity while providing financial and technical forestry assistance to nonindustrial forest landowners. The power of this program comes from the regional partner’s ability to set parameters for assistance that directly meet the unique needs of the landowners in their local region. As part of these grants, CAL FIRE also created and funded Emergency Forest Restoration Teams (EFRT) to quickly restore forestlands burned by wildfires, often funding them while the fire is still ongoing.

Projects under this grant:

• Make funding available through agreements with landowners to pay for specific, non-commercial ecological forest improvement and wildfire resilience practices.
• Provide technical assistance to promote information sharing and education on the full range of effective forest management practices and opportunities as well as forest management education and management planning.

Program Impact: This support for small forest landowners includes:

1. Eleven grant funded projects awarded, totaling more than $30 million.
2. More than12,000 acres planned for treatment.

• More than 500 individual landowners assisted.
• More than 500,000 seedlings to be planted.

Resilience in Action: The Dixie Fire ignited on July 13th 2021, eventually burning 963,309 acres in Plumas, Butte, Lassen and Tehama Counties. The fire caused significant damage and the destruction of communities and ecologies. Half the fire burned with a tree mortality of 90 percent, creating landscape conditions without the potential for natural regeneration, susceptible to type conversion, erosion, and with residual hazardous fuels.

CAL FIRE awarded an $8M grant to the Feather River Resource Conservation District to formulate an Emergency Forest Restoration Team (EFoRT) in early 2022 to address this unprecedented need. The EFoRT is working with NIPF landowners to provide technical assistance and implement post-fire restoration activities across 2,558 acres. They are providing rapid assessments, securing permitting, and creating an implementation plan to satisfy restoration goals. EFoRT will ultimately implement these forest management plans.

Program Description: Seedbanks and reforestation are at maximum capacity in California. The demand for tree-growing operations have expanded dramatically over the last few years due to California’s drought, tree mortality and devastating wildfires sweeping through the state. Originally established in 1921, The Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center is being revitalized and expanded to play a prominent role in meeting California’s reforestation needs.

The nursery makes seedlings available to state and private forestland owners as part of a long-term venture to support statewide reforestation needs, including the California Forest Improvement Program. In the state’s continuing mission to meet growing needs, we are expanding operations to meet long- term vision for the state’s restoration efforts.

This facility also holds the State Seedbank. This long-term repository contains more than 42,000 pounds of seed native to a broad range of areas and elevations in California. This seedbank contains the highest quality seedstock available and provides seed storage for a small fee, both to public and private landowners.

Program Impact: In the last two years, the Lewis A-Moran Reforestation Center has:

• Upgraded facilities to expand seedling greenhouses.
• Funded grants to expand greenhouse space throughout the state, making room for the increasing demand for seedlings.
• Improved cones and seed collection by establishing a Seed Cooperative to share seed/cone and reforestation resources across State, Federal, private and non-profit organizations.
• Established a long term survey of cones.

Resilience in Action: Climate Adapted Seed Tool (CAST) — The Reforestation Center has been working with climate scientists and forest biologists to help better align planting stock with the expected climate stressors at the planting locations. Forest trees, even within the same species, are genetically different from each other and are historically catalogued by geographically mapped areas called seed zones. Seed transfer rules specify a geographic distance beyond which populations should not be moved. In an era of rapidly changing climatic conditions, foresters must match the climatic adaptability of seedlings to the climatic conditions of restoration sites. The Climate Adapted Seed Tool will greatly expand California’s ability to match expected climatic conditions with the seedlings planted, to ensure forests are healthy and productive into the future.

Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center forester tending to seedlings

 Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center seedling greenhouses.

Program Description: CAL FIRE’s grant program will support forest health activities for post-fire reforestation and regeneration. This program was developed to meet the recommendations of the Forest and Wildfire Resilience Task Force’s Reforestation report. Post-fire reforestation treatments include site preparation and post-planting maintenance that are directly related to reforestation. The intent of post-fire reforestation treatments is to reforest or restore forestland following catastrophic fire. Reforestation treatments include tree planting, installing tree shelters, site preparation, oak woodland restoration, invasive plant removal, and herbicide.

Program Impact: The projects will restore climate-resilient natural conditions prioritizing native species and a density and distribution of seedlings that address emergency climate conditions including increased fire and drought, consistent with the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Reforestation Working Group.

Resilience in Action: CAL FIRE has developed the Post-Fire Reforestation and Regeneration grant guidelines and awards are anticipated in the spring of 2023.

Program Description: The Forest Legacy Program protects important forest lands threatened with conversion to non-forest uses, like development. Protection of California’s forests protects wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, watershed protection, open space, and sustainable timber production. Intact forests also contribute significantly to the storage and sequestration of carbon.

Under this competitive grant program, CAL FIRE purchases or accepts donations of conservation easements or fee title of forest lands. The primary tool CAL FIRE uses to conserve forest lands in perpetuity is permanent Working Forest Conservation Easements. These conservation easements do more than just restrict development on a property, they protect forest values by concentrating on sustainable forest practices that provide both economic value from the land and long-term land stewardship.

Program Impact: Since the early action funding of 2021 and subsequent fire resilience budgets in 2021 and 2022 Forest Legacy has:

1. Entered into eight grant agreements worth $22.8 m with private forestland owners.
2. Protected 36,358 acres of forestland.

Resilience in Action: Pacific Union College, CAL FIRE and Land Trust of Napa County Working Together to Protect Angwin Forestland

Pacific Union College (PUC), CAL FIRE and the Land Trust of Napa County announced a joint effort to permanently protect and manage more than 1,750 acres of forestland in Angwin, adjacent to the college’s campus. This forest is part of a larger ownership in the Angwin area held by Pacific Union College for more than 100 years. It is one of the most significant forests in Napa County.

The land is owned by Pacific Union College (PUC) near its Angwin campus in the mountains northeast of St. Helena. The forest abuts Las Posadas State Forest and a preserve which supports significant wildlife habitats and rare plants.

Pacific Union College was considering selling its forest lands, but changed course when it learned about the conservation easement through the State’s Forest Legacy Program. The conservation easement permanently eliminates the potential for residential, commercial and agricultural development on the land and creates a continuous corridor of protected land along the entire length of the eastern ridge above Napa Valley.

Program Description: The San Diego River Conservancy is working to advance the objectives to strengthen fire resilience, including maintaining fire breaks and defensible space, fuel reduction, restoration, and procurement of new fire apparatus, emergency equipment, and fire trucks. These actions will enhance the management of fire-prone habitats using methods known to reduce the risk and intensity of fires, improve fire access roads, and provide for other fire and forest resilience activities.

Program Impact: Early action investments began with projects to create defensible space and fuel breaks and reduce mostly non-native invasive species in the cities of San Diego, El Cajon, and Santee. The County of San Diego Department of Parks and Recreation will focus on reducing fuel loads on more than 10,000 acres in its parks and preserves. In addition, the Cleveland National Forest is implementing activities for hazard fuel reduction and wildfire emergency preparedness in the headwater of the San Diego and Tijuana Rivers, including the relocation of a helicopter landing zone for access in this remote area. Furthermore, the Conservancy awarded more than $1 million to local Bands within the Kumeyaay Nation for wildfire resilience, vegetation management equipment and two new Type 3 fire engines (Brush Rigs) one to the Barona Band of Mission Indians and one for the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians.

Through a grant to the Resource Conservation District (RCD) of Greater San Diego County, they have provided hazardous fuel reduction removal to hundreds of private landowners at no cost to disabled and low-income homes in the San Diego area. The project targeted landowners in the Wildland Urban Interface areas. Services provided include chipping and establishing defensible space around homes designated by CalFIRE as high-fire risk zones in San Diego County.

The San Diego River Conservancy reduced its timeline from nine months to three weeks to get grants signed, and work started. As a result, projects were able to launch by Memorial Day 2021 and expedited project implementation by a full year. A regular budget appropriation beginning in July with a 9-month grant process would only have seen projects launch on Memorial Day 2022.

Resilience in Action:

United States Forest Service – Cleveland National Forest

The Cleveland National Forest’s Wildfire Resilience and Forest Health project will reduce fuel loads across approximately 1,855 acres, 100 miles of road brushing and maintenance, and prescribed fire supplies. This project also includes conducting more than 700 forest stand exams which will protect sensitive resources and assist in planning future work to restore oak woodlands and expand forest management. Project sites within the Cleveland National Forest include the San Diego River, Sweetwater River, and Tijuana River watersheds.

The project also includes the construction of a helicopter landing zone and three 10,000-gallon underground water tanks to provide a local source of water to help reduce wildfire severity and improve the safety of visitors and first responders in this remote area. These improvements are located at Cha’chaany Hamuk Trailhead (formerly Three Sisters Falls Trailhead) in a remote area of the San Diego River’s upper watershed. This multi-faceted project was designed to enhance the capability for wildfire suppression and rescue people within the High Fire Severity Threat Zone. To support this added workload, Cleveland National Forest will hire additional employees to ensure the protection of sensitive and cultural resources and surge staffing for prescribed fire.

Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy

Through the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, the Campo Band of Mission Indians, the Campo Fire Protection District, the Jamul Indian Village, the Manzanita Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, will use wildfire funds to procure fire-related equipment during wildland fire events. These tribal reservations are designated by CAL FIRE as a very high Fire Hazard Severity Zone and cover more than 57,000 acres. The project will provide new fire vehicles and fire-related equipment such as skid steers with masticators to help reduce the risk of fire by implementing fuel reduction, vegetation management, defensible space, and fuel breaks targeting the removal of diseased, dead, and dying trees.

Native American Conservation Corp (Pilot Project)

The Colorado Desert District of the California Department of Parks and Recreation was the lead agency for this project. State Parks developed a two-year pilot program for local people to participate in training for fire and forest resiliency activities in San Diego County. The goal is to increase employment opportunities for local Native Americans with their respective tribes, State Parks, U.S. Forest Service, or other local organizations.

This pilot project provides on-the-job training at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park in basic wildland fire, chainsaw use in the wilderness, basic first aid and CPR, GPS training, plant identification, and traditional ecological knowledge. In addition to State Park’s leadership, other Conservancy partners assisted in project implementation, including the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, Cleveland National Forest, Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County, local Tribal Elders, and San Diego Canyonlands. After participants complete training, some individuals will return to their tribal communities to work, and others have received opportunities to work on fuel crews for State Parks and neighboring tribes.

Program Description: The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy’s (RMC) Wildfire Prevention Grant Program serves to increase wildfire resilience and prevention, improve forest health, restore burned areas, and stimulate workforce development within its 1,600 square mile territory. It offers funding to eligible partners through three main categories associated with different geographic, ecological, and community needs:

1) San Gabriel Mountains and Foothills Fire Prevention Planning and Management.

2) Urban Wildlands and Hills Fire Prevention Planning and Management.

3) Forest Health: Fire Recovery, Response, Restoration, Education and Stewardship.

Priority areas under the program include invasive species management and native habitat revegetation, fuel load maintenance, fire prevention planning, defensible space improvement, and public stewardship building aimed at creating educated and fire-resilient communities.

Program Impact: In its first year and a half of operation, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy’s Wildfire Prevention Grant Program has awarded more than $12 million in grants to partner agencies conducting wildfire resilience activities in the Los Angeles region—encumbering the entirety of RMC’s Early Action Budget funds. In summer 2022, the RMC entered into a $2.6 million Collection Agreement with the USDA Forest Service to fund the implementation of more than 1,400 acres of hazardous fuels reduction and invasive weed removal in the Angeles National Forest.

Resilience in Action: The RMC’s funding partnership with the National Forest Foundation (NFF) and the Angeles National Forest (ANF) was highlighted as a field tour at the February 2023 Southern California Regional Meeting of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. RMC’s combined investment with both the NFF and ANF, exceeding $6 million, will treat nearly 2,500 acres of hazardous fuels across the San Gabriel Mountains over the next two years with work starting in late winter 2023.

This trilateral partnership is already serving as a model for future state-federal-private cooperative efforts to tackle wildfire resilience challenges in California, and RMC will continue to lead regional collaboration through its participation as a new grantee of the DOC’s Regional Forest and Fire Capacity (RFFC) Program as of January 30, 2023. In complement to legislative funding, the RFFC Program will allow RMC to develop an equity-centered, spatially-explicit portfolio of implementation-ready wildfire resilience projects across its territory and is already working with partners do identify high-priority targets to elevate for pilot funding. This plan will then be used to channel future state funding to the areas with the greatest need.

Figure 34. USDA Forest Service personnel describing progress on fuels treatment areas in the Angeles National Forest outside of Wrightwood, CA on Big Pines Highway under the RMC-NFF “San Gabriel Mountains Landscape Scale Wildfire Resilience Project”.

Program Description: The State Coastal Conservancy’s (SCC) Wildfire Resilience Program supports projects that improve natural lands to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in areas where people live. These grants accelerate on-the-ground activities that reduce the risks of wildland fires.

Program Impact: The SCC has awarded more than 70 grants to local governments, tribes, nonprofit organizations, and special districts from Trinity County south to San Diego. These projects have supported vegetation treatment, grazing, prescribed fire, and chipping programs. The projects have removed ladder fuels and created defensible space and shaded fuel breaks along the California coast.

SCC ran a solicitation for additional proposals during 2021 and received proposals requesting $88 million in funding. SCC now accepts wildfire projects proposals in an ongoing solicitation.

Resilience in Action: The SCC funded a grant to the Land Trust of Santa Barbara for grazing at the Arroyo Hondo Preserve. The Preserve was in the center of the Alisal Fire and the grazing was credited with saving the historic structures on the Preserve.

A grant to the to the Marin Municipal Water District will not only support fire, but improve biodiversity. This grant will implement vegetation management projects identified in the Biodiversity, Fire, and Fuels Integrated Plan (BFFIP) in the Mount Tamalpais Watershed, and to reduce ladder fuels in the Marin County Parks Blithedale Summit Preserve.

Figure 32 Grant to the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County to implement prescribed herbivory to reduce fuel loads and create a buffer to preventwildfire spread in the southern portion of Arroyo Hondo Preserve. These photos are from shortly after the Alisal fire; the grazed land is unburnt.

Figure 33 Grant to the to the Marin Municipal Water District to implement vegetation management projects identified in the Biodiversity, Fire, and Fuels Integrated Plan (BFFIP) in the Mount Tamalpais Watershed, and to reduce ladder fuels in the Marin County Parks Blithedale Summit Preserve.

Program Description: The Tahoe Conservancy is reducing wildfire risk to Tahoe communities and improving forest resilience. This work includes reducing flammable vegetation in the forests near homes, neighborhoods, and communities. It also includes managing forest vegetation and restoring meadows and streams to improve forest health and habitat so that these ecosystems are more resilient to insects, disease, wildfire, drought, and climate change. To get all this important work done the Tahoe Conservancy is building capacity by creating new jobs and training programs, using smart technology, and creating efficient government processes.

Aerial photo of south Lake Tahoe forested community.

Program Impact: Wildfire and forest resilience funding is helping the Tahoe Conservancy and its partners make progress towards the goals within the Lake Tahoe Basin Forest Action Plan. This includes completing and maintaining 25,000 acres of Tahoe’s wildland-urban interface treatments by 2025, with approximately 11,000 acres remaining to reach this goal. The Tahoe Conservancy is also working closely with partners to fund strategic priorities, increase capacity, and improve technologies and science through various partnerships including the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative.

The Tahoe Conservancy aims to complete initial treatments on all 5,500 acres of its forested ownership by 2025 and has committed $6.5 million in wildfire funding so far towards this goal. The Tahoe Conservancy is also working with other State and local partners to complete priority work on other publicly owned properties, consistent with the Lake Tahoe Basin Forest Action Plan.

The Tahoe Conservancy has entered into several funding agreements for a total of $5.35 million for work on federal lands. This includes hazard tree removal and emergency fuel hazard reduction work on 1,500 acres of federally owned property adjacent to roads and trails in the Lake Tahoe Basin portion of the Caldor fire footprint. It also includes funding for 70 acres of treatments on federal lands in cross-jurisdictional community protection projects under the Conservancy’s Good Neighbor Agreement with the USDA Forest Service, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. Tahoe Conservancy staff are working with USDA Forest Service staff to incorporate federal land into future planned community protection projects to achieve more comprehensive and beneficial projects.

The Department of Conservation provided additional funding to the Tahoe Conservancy from the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program to increase capacity to treat forests and reduce hazardous fuels throughout the Basin. These funds are supporting multiple projects, including the Basin Community Wildfire Protection Plan update, which will collaboratively develop a priority project list for future work. The Tahoe Conservancy also provided a grant to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California to increase their capacity and complete culturally significant projects.

Forestry aides with the Tahoe Conservancy identifying project boundaries for future forestry treatment project in support of the Lake Tahoe Basin Forest Action Plan.

California Conservation Corps members conducting fuel reduction work on USDA Forest Service property.

Resilience in Action: Firefighters successfully defended Lake Tahoe neighborhoods from the Caldor Fire, without a single home lost in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Firefighters attributed previously completed wildland-urban interface treatments as a major contributor to their success. Wildfire and forest resilience funding is being used by the Conservancy to continue this work throughout other areas in Tahoe so that all neighborhoods and communities have the best odds of survival, no matter where a fire starts.

Program Description: The Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s (SNC) Watershed Improvement Program (WIP) stewards the 27-million-acre Sierra-Cascade region that contains 44 percent of the state’s overall elevated or extreme fire risk. The Sierra-Cascade region sources 80 percent of California’s water and more than 72 percent of the region is in a high-risk fire zone.

Effective at using science-based management and building community coalitions, the SNC’s WIP supports efforts to restore resilience to the forested landscapes and communities of the Sierra-Cascade.

The burn severity of the 2020 Sheep Fire decreased as it burned into areas where the SNC, and others, funded Lassen Fire Safe Council forest-health treatments, helping to protect the city of Susanville. Creating shaded-fuel breaks in the wildland-urban interface that benefit both community and forest resilience is an example of the kind of multi-benefit projects prioritized by SNC’s WIP.

The forest floor near a Quincy, CA neighborhood is marked by only mild fire effects, like burnt grasses and lightly charred tree trunks, two months after the deadly 2020 North Complex Fire. The area was treated under an SNC WIP grant that helped to create a 2.5-mile-long buffer of fire-resilient forests along Quincy-La Porte Rd. Fire suppression officials credited this buffer for the successful defense of all homes in the area.

A portion of the 2022 Oak Fire footprint. The green trees in the foreground are on the ranch of a private landowner with a long history of active management, including the SNC-funded Clarks Valley Wildfire Reduction Project. Elsewhere, the Mariposa County fire burned almost 20,000 acres in mostly damaging ways—destroying more than 200 structures and leaving high-severity impacts across nearly 60 percent of its footprint.

Watershed Improvement Program grants have proven their value in reducing wildfire risk in recent fire seasons. SNC-funded projects helped to protect Susanville from the 2020 Sheep Fire, the town of Quincy from the North Complex Fire, and Lassen National Park facilities from the 2021 Dixie Fire. These grants also had beneficial impacts during the 2021 Caldor Fire where SNC had supported a prescribed burn in the Caples watershed several years prior which helped save that forest when the Caldor Fire swept through. Grants also supported the Fire Adapted 50 project that protected communities like Sly Park and Pollock Pines during the Caldor Fire.

The SNC’s current Wildfire Recovery and Forest Resilience Grant Program prioritizes the planning and implementation of forest health projects in high-risk regions to create more resilient landscapes, reduce wildfire risk, and accelerate recovery from recent wildfires.

Program Impact: Over the past two years the SNC has approved more than $36 million in grants for wildfire recovery and forest resilience projects. The 33 projects funded will complete wildfire resilience treatments on nearly 18,000 acres, replant more than 9,000 acres damaged by recent wildfires, and create thousands of acres of shovel-ready projects through fuel-reduction planning and prioritization efforts that will be conducted on approximately 565,000 acres across the Sierra-Cascade region.

The SNC opened a second $36 million round of wildfire recovery and forest resilience grants in June 2022. In response, SNC received approximately $89.5 million in project proposals. The SNC has completed its review of proposals and is moving forward with recommendations to award all remaining funds by June 2023.

Resilience in Action: The $20 million in 2021 Early Action funding provided to the SNC was distributed within three months of receipt to 15 shovel-ready wildfire resilience projects. Two of those projects are complete and are already protecting communities, watersheds and a hospital in the Sierra-Cascade region. Work is well underway on others, including projects that were impacted by the record-shattering 2021 wildfire season. Some, like the Thompson Peak Initiative-Bootsole Project in the Plumas National Forest, have been able to adapt treatment plans to take advantage of areas that did not burn at damaging high severity to build resilience.

Strategically located on a ridge separating the Merced River and Tuolumne River watersheds, the Wagner Ridge Fuel Break Project(video) expanded and widened a shaded fuel break to 400 feet. The fuel break will help with future firefighting efforts to keep a fire from crossing from one critical watershed to the other. The Wagner Ridge Fuel Break Project was funded in July 2021 with Early Action funding and was completed in Fall 2022.

Adjacent to homes and critical town infrastructure, including the Plumas District Hospital, the Quincy Wildfire Protection Project (video) should live up to its name by helping to protect people and property from wildfire. The rural hospital is located in the wildland urban interface in a very high fire severity zone and provides essential services to disadvantaged communities in the Sierra-Cascade region. The July 2021 grant was funded with Early Action budget funds and work on the ground was completed in Fall 2022.

Program Description: Forty percent of forest land in California is privately owned. And small non-industrial forest landowners represent 26 percent of the forest landownership in California. If neglected these patchwork plots of land, ranging from 20 acres to one thousand acres, could exacerbate a wildfire. The California Forest Improvement Program (CFIP) provides small landowners with technical and financial assistance for planning, reforestation, and resource management investments that improve the health and resilience of forestland since its establishment in 1978. This helps create a more contiguous healthy, wildfire-ready forest regardless of land ownership.

Program Impact: In the last two years, this program has:

• Entered into 108 grant agreements with small, non-industrial private forestland owners.

• Restored 5,700 acres of forestland.

Resilience in Action: The CFIP program recently adopted an Emergency Forest Management Plan (EFMP), a more streamlined approach to reforesting lands devastated by catastrophic wildfire. This program helped restore small family-owned forestlands after the Creek Fire near shaver lake and the Antelope Fire in Siskiyou County.

Overstory of fire resilient pine trees with an understory of highly invasive Scotch broom a species very prone to fire.

A portion of the property post-treatment.