Project Implementation in High-Risk Regions - Coast

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.