CA Environmental Briefs: Climate Adaption Strategy/ Wildfire Mitigation with Prescribed Fire Efforts

California Updated Climate Adaptation Strategy to Protect Communities from Accelerating Impacts

SACRAMENTO — Following the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s release of its latest report on efforts to combat the climate crisis, the Newsom Administration April 4, launched the state’s Climate Adaptation Strategy outlining the all-hands-on-deck approach to building climate resilience across California. The announcement comes on the heels of the latest snow survey conducted on April 1, which found that the statewide snowpack has dropped to 38 percent following three straight months of record dry conditions.

The Climate Adaptation Strategy elevates six key priorities that must drive all resilience actions in California:

• Strengthen protections for climate-vulnerable communities
• Bolster public health and safety efforts to protect against increasing climate risks
• Build a climate-resilient economy
• Accelerate nature-based climate solutions and strengthen climate resilience of natural systems
• Make decisions based on the best available climate science
• Partner and collaborate to leverage resources

It also brings together in one place nearly 150 climate adaptation actions from existing state plans and strategies, and for the first time, introduces success metrics and timeframes for each action.

This strategy has also been developed to guide and link several sector-based efforts already underway to address climate-driven threats, such as the state’s Water Resilience Portfolio and Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan. It also connects region-based efforts in progress across the state.

California’s Climate Adaptation Strategy is being made available in an interactive website rather than a traditional hard copy report. This website will provide an ongoing hub for information on climate resilience and will make it easier for Californians to understand and shape climate action. The website will be updated to track progress and adjustments, and integrate emerging, best-available science.

California Launches Strategic Plan to Increase Wildfire Mitigation with Prescribed Fire Efforts

SACRAMENTO – The Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force March 30, issued a strategic plan for expanding the use of beneficial fire to expand the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning to build forest and community resilience statewide – efforts critical to forest management and wildfire mitigation. By expanding the use of beneficial fire, the state can utilize smart burning tactics on brush and other fuels to help both prevent the start of fires and mitigate the spread of wildfires.

Based on a collaborative effort of the state’s leading fire experts and managers, the Strategic Plan sets a target of expanding beneficial fire to 400,000 acres annually by 2025, a shared goal between state, federal, tribal and local entities – part of an overall goal to treat 1 million acres annually in California by 2025. The state invested $1.5 billion in wildfire resilience in 2021, including significant support for prescribed fire and cultural burning.

The key elements include:

Launching an online prescribed fire permitting system to streamline the review and approval of prescribed fire projects;
Establishing the state’s new Prescribed Fire Claims Fund to reduce liability for private burners;
Beginning a statewide program to enable tribes and cultural fire practitioners to revitalize cultural burning practices;
A prescribed fire training center to grow, train and diversify the state’s prescribed fire workforce;
An interagency beneficial fire tracking system;
Pilot projects to undertake larger landscape-scale burns; and
A comprehensive review of the state’s smoke management programs to facilitate prescribed fire while protecting public health.

The announcement delivers on several of the key commitments made in the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan issued in January 2021. The Action Plan is also backed by the Governor’s $1.5 billion investment in forest health and wildfire resilience, and a proposed $1.2 billion additional investment for fiscal years 2022-23 and 2023-24.