The Department of Conservation balances today's needs with tomorrow's challenges and fosters intelligent, sustainable, and efficient use of California's energy, land, and mineral resources.
The Regional Forest and Fire Capacity program, administered by the Department of Conservation under the California Natural Resources Agency, strives to enhance regional capacity to prioritize, develop, and implement projects that improve forest health and fire resilience, and increase carbon sequestration in forests across California. The program aligns with the California Forest Carbon Plan and Executive Order B-52-18. Utilizing block grants, it enables six regional entities and two statewide recipients to engage in regional planning, project development, outreach, and the execution of landscape-level forest health projects. The initiative emphasizes broad and inclusive outreach, significant partnership within regions, and prioritizes involving state, federal, tribal, and local governments, as well as water agencies, resource conservation districts, fire safe councils, and other nonprofits. It aims to build local partner capacity for equitable participation and representation in planning and project development. With an increase of $50 million in early action funding, the program expands to include four new regional grantees and provides additional funding to existing grantees to broaden their efforts.