Wildfire Resilience Program
Catastrophic wildfires are a growing threat to California’s coastal forests. The state of California is developing new programs to prevent out of control wildfires and to increase the capacity of local communities to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to wildfires.
The Coastal Conservancy’s Wildfire Resilience Program supports local partners to develop and implement projects that improve forest health and reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in areas where people are living near wildlands.
An over-arching goal of the Wildfire Resilience Program is to build organizational capacity at the local and regional level to implement forest health and fire risk reduction projects. Healthy forests are less likely to burn and projects that increase fire breaks and clear ladder fuels help prevent isolated fires from becoming catastrophic wildfires.
The Conservancy will fund a wide range of activities to plan, accelerate, and support implementation of land and vegetation management activities to reduce wildfire risk to communities.
The Conservancy requires CEQA findings before we can fund implementation of projects. We have identified a need for technical assistance to help local partners obtain required environmental documentation required to implement projects. To address this, the Conservancy has retained Montrose Environmental to help project partners navigate permitting for a suite of wildfire projects. If you are interested in learning more about this technical assistance please contact wildfire.resilience@scc.ca.gov
Priorities for this grant program include projects that:
- are in high wildfire risk areas, such as those identified in the CalFire Fire Hazard Severity Zones
or the FRAP Priority Landscape Maps - implement the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan
- provide significant public benefit
- benefit disadvantaged or underserved community
- lead to longer term resilience or more sustainable benefits
- are identified in a Community Wildfire Protection Plan or other wildfire resilience/prevention plan
- benefit public or protected lands
- leverage resources through coordination across jurisdictions
The Coastal Conservancy has received funding for its Wildfire Resilience Program from the General Fund, a block grant from the Department of Conservation’s Regional Fire and Forest Health Capacity program, the California Climate Initiative Program (also known as Cap and Trade), Proposition 68, and Proposition 84.
Grant pre-applications are being accepted through the rolling pre-application process described here. A webinar on the grant program was held in December 2021 – a recording can be found here.
To be notified about Wildfire Resilience Program and other grants, sign up for our mailing list here.
Latest News
- Notice of Intention to amend the Conflict of Interest Code of the State Coastal ConservancyThe Coastal Conservancy proposes to amend its conflict of interest code to include employee positions that involve the making or participation in the making of decisions that may foreseeably have a material effect on any financial interest, as set forth in subdivision (a) of section 87302 of the Government Code. The amendment carries out the […] (Read more on Notice of Intention...)
- Press Release: State Coastal Conservancy Awards $84 Million for Climate Resilience, Public Access, Habitat Restoration, and Wildfire ResilienceLast week, the Board of the State Coastal Conservancy authorized funding totaling $84 million for projects to protect and restore coastal lands, increase coastal resilience to climate change, improve public access to the coast, and reduce the impact of wildfire on coastal lands. Grants awarded include: $5,552,800 to the Redwood Community Action Agency to restore 350 […] (Read more on Press Release: State...)
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