Grantee: Alpine Springs County Water District
Framework: Implementation

Strategic fuel reduction on private property with public easement and public water line bisecting.

COMMUNITY WILDFIRE RESILIENCE PROGRAM

Framework: Capacity Building

The establishment of a full-time Firewise Coordinator for a minimum of two years.

Grantee: Feather River Land Trust
Framework: Project Planning
Location: Plumas County

The Feather River Land Trust has formed an interdisciplinary Fire Recovery Task Group to guide recovery efforts from the Dixie and Beckwourth Complex Fires on Land Trust owned and managed properties in the Feather River Watershed. The strategy includes on the ground monitoring and assessment of burn impacts on the landscape which is used to inform the ecologically resilient restoration plan. The effort is a 3-year plan for recovery and restoration that will serve as a learning tool for other communities.

Grantee: National Forest Foundation

Project 1: Glenshire Brockway Pile Burning

In addition to 94 acres of fuel reduction work, 204 acres were cut and piled and 4.11 miles of fireline were constructed around the borders of units. Piles were burned by the Forest Service in Fall 2022.

Acres: 94
Framework: Fuel Reduction
Location: Glenshire-Brockway

Project 2: Five Creeks

Tree marking and treatment layout for fuel reduction work will be done along both sides of HWY 89, a critical evacuation route for this region and a severely over dense area of forest. Finding funding for this step between approved environmental permitting and implementation of fuel reduction work is often difficult, but required before implementation can occur.

Framework: Fuel Reduction
Location: HWY 89 – Olympic Valley to Truckee

Project 3: Planning Acceleration

This project will conduct the necessary monitoring and data collection to acquire environmental permitting for fuel reduction near the Wildland Urban Interface. Working with the US Forest Service, this project will help develop a consistent pipeline of execution-ready fuel reduction projects on federally managed land. The location of the project is deemed high wildfire risk along a crucial emergency evacuation route and complements existing fuel reduction efforts in the immediate vicinity.

Framework: Capacity Building
Location: HWY 89

Grantee: Placer Resource Conservation District
Framework: Capacity Building

Trailer and equipment purchase for Prescribed Burn Cooperative Program.

Grantee: Tahoe Resource Conservation District
Framework: Community Education

Fire Adapted Community Neighborhood Leader Training Video development in both Spanish and English.

Grantees: Tahoe Truckee Regional Fire Districts
Location: Tahoe Truckee

Support new capacity for Firewise Community Coordination in the region to increase preventative efforts, deliver community education, and integrate into Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD).

Grantee: Truckee Donner Land Trust
Framework: Project Planning
Location: Billy Mack Canyon & Creekside Woods

A planning document for forest restoration work in Billy Mack Canyon will be completed with a Registered Professional Forester so that fuel reduction work can proceed. Hand thinning treatment will be completed on the overstocked Creekside Woods property. These locations complement nearby State Park forest management planning efforts and create a fuel break for the Tahoe Donner Community and west end of Donner Lake.

Grantee: Truckee River Watershed Council
Acres: 42.5
Framework: Project Planning
Location: Middle Truckee Watershed

The Truckee River Watershed Council is developing a strategy to streamline  environmental permitting for forest restoration projects that cross multi-jurisdictional land owners.  TRWC will initiate survey work to develop environmental compliance documents  to move high priority forest health projects to the implementation stage.  These efforts will be focused on the HWY 89 corridor – a critical emergency evacuation route for Tahoe Truckee communities.

Grantee: VP Data Commons
Framework: Project Planning
Location: Tahoe National Forest

In order to develop a 10-year implementation plan to prioritize restoration projects, the Tahoe National Forest is looking to use a technology application called Land Tender. Land Tender aggregates datasets on landscape health, infrastructure, and fire ecology to produce forest health assessments and treatment plans with customizable weighted priorities. Forest management and fuels reduction is being viewed on a landscape scale now due to the massive size of the wildfires we are seeing. We need to look beyond silos of property owner boundaries and jurisdictional boundaries and plan for ecological resilience on a much larger scale.

Grantee: Great Basin Institute
Framework: Workforce Development
Location: Tahoe Truckee

Great Basin Institute (GBI) has an established and successful history of providing a wide range of forestry services through the hiring and deployment of crews and individuals on private and public lands. Current funding sources often limit or disallow spending on scientific field equipment and support for housing for forestry crews. Recognizing the high cost and low availability of housing in the Tahoe Truckee region, Forest Futures funding can be used to supplement housing costs for crew members working in our region’s forests. In addition, expensive field equipment will be purchased to support surveying, monitoring and planning work for fuel reduction and wildfire resilience projects. 

Grantee: Maidu Summit Consortium
Framework: Capacity Building
Location: Plumas County

Maidu community members will be employed in the Dixie and Beckwourth Complex fire recovery efforts, just north of Tahoe Truckee in the Feather River Watershed. The Maidu Summit Consortium is an inter-tribal collective that envisions re-acquired ancestral lands as a vast and unique park system dedicated to the purposes of education, healing, protection, and ecosystem management based upon the Maidu cultural and philosophic perspectives. No one knows and understands these landscapes better than indigenous communities, therefore supporting indigenous involvement is critical to successful fire recovery.

Grantee: Sierra Institute
Framework: Workforce Development
Location: Plumas County

The Sierra Institute implements the Plumas Conservation, Restoration & Education in Watersheds (P-CREW) youth corps program –  an immersive, five-week, experiential work opportunity designed to offer employment on Northern California’s public lands. Crews conduct fuel reduction and forest restoration work and Sierra Institute provides long-term career development support to the crew members. Natural Resource Management career paths are historically dominated by the privileged, by supporting this program we are promoting diversity in forestry workforce.

Grantee: Sierra Nevada Alliance
Framework: Workforce Development
Location: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Corps, a mid-level forestry workforce development program, will experience a gap in funding this spring. With capacity support, the Sierra Corps Forestry Fellowship Program will continue and help increase the amount of trained, knowledgeable forestry professionals available in our region to support forest restoration work. Over the past two years, 80% of participants continued on in the field of forestry either with their Host Site, moving into a staff position, or with a different organization conducting similar work.

Grantee: Lake Tahoe Community College Foundation
Framework: Workforce Development

Funding for forestry field equipment for forestry classes and scholarships for students to purchase personal equipment in Fire and Forestry degree programs at LTCC.

Grantee: Placer County
Framework: Project Planning

Support for a Regional Biomass Utilization and Integration Study.