For two years, a local wildfire safety nonprofit, Sherwood Firewise Communities, has sought to clear a series of overgrown logging and emergency access roads that could provide alternative paths out of Brooktrails in Mendocino County. But progress is slow.
to get this money out the door, and many projects across the state are funded. But the clock is ticking. Without the green light to complete prescribed burns, fuel breaks and vegetation thinning, nearby communities are at the mercy of another wildfire season that threatens to be just as devastating as the last two, which burned nearly 7 million acres combined.
"The scale of the wildfire crisis in California is unprecedented, and we need a response to match the scale and severity of this challenge," he said. "This is not enough by any stretch of the imagination," said Char Miller, professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College, who has monitored the development of CalVTP. He says California has millions of acres in desperate need of forest management and fuel reduction.
Fire prevention project managers who've tried to use the program have faced unforeseen hurdles. For example, the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association wanted to use a single CalVTP application for a series of controlled burns across Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties. The 10 prescribed burn sites would help protect homes and ecologically sensitive habitats, including freshwater wetlands.
"We didn't find clear data showing that it had significantly expedited projects," Helen Kerstein, an analyst with the LAO, told lawmakers during aAlthough two years had passed since Newsom formally launched the program, Kerstein told lawmakers that"it's very early days" for CalVTP. Wood chippers have started thinning ladder fuels between stands of looming trees in the Yuba River watershed in the Sierra foothills, north of Sacramento. Prescribed burning also is planned to help reintroduce low-intensity fire to the landscape. The project aims to protect an essential ecological feature of the foothills, as well as surrounding communities.
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