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Governor’s Proposed Budget Includes $1 Billion to Tackle Wildfire

by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur

The 2020 California fire season saw nearly 4.3 million acres of the state burned across more than 9,000 incidents.

With the devastation hitting ranchers and the rural communities they call home in virtually every region of the state, CCA staff and officers are laser-focused this year on improving California’s policies regarding wildfire prevention and resilience.

Of course, sound wildfire policy cannot be effectuated without adequate funding. To ensure adequate funding is made available for wildfire resilience efforts, CCA has in recent months joined with a broad coalition of stakeholders informally known as the “Resilient Forests Coalition” to urge the Administration and Legislature to appropriately prioritize wildfire in the state’s budget.

In mid-November, our coalition called on the Governor to make a supplemental appropriation of $500 million in the current fiscal year (FY 2020-21) to “provide the state with critical funding to act immediately to reduce risk of wildfire in California.” That request included $50 million “to expand the use of prescribed fire to be much more proactive about burning under conditions of our choosing, rather than wildfires burning largely on the hottest, driest, and windiest days of the year.”

Our coalition followed up with a mid-December letter asking the Governor to include $1.5 billion “for landscape health, wildfire risk reduction, and other critical community wildfire preparedness activities” in his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2021-22.

Both letters were aimed at ensuring wildfire resilience and prevention would be top-of-mind as the administration prepared its proposed budget for an early-January release. Targeted outreach to administration officials and media coverage amplified our requests.

On Jan. 8, Governor Newsom released the details of his proposed budget. And while the budget falls short of the full appropriation requested by CCA in late 2020, Governor Newsom has proposed significant investments totaling $1 billion for his “Wildfire and Forest Resilience Expenditure Plan,” including $323 million in supplemental appropriations for the current fiscal year to ensure immediate action to reduce wildfire risk to the state.

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot called the $1 billion proposal “a quantum increase in wildfire resilience investment,” saying it represented “somewhat of a paradigm shift” for the state, which typically allocates significant funds for wildfire response but has historically under-invested in wildfire prevention.

Specifically, the budget provides $512 million in funding for resilient forests and landscapes, including $142 12 California Cattleman February 2021 million to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, State Parks and State Lands Commission for stewardship of state-owned lands.

The budget also proposes allocating $335 million for wildfire fuel breaks, including $50 million for CalFIRE and $20 million to the California Conservation Corps for the completion of “at least 45 to 60 strategic fuel breaks projects each year over the next several years.”

Rounding out the proposed budget’s broad wildfire and forest resilience priorities are $113 million to protect firevulnerable communities (a total which includes $75 million in federal funds); $76 million to boost job and economic opportunities through forest management job training, California Conservation Corps workforce programs and the state’s new Climate Catalyst Revolving Loan Fund; and $39 million to incorporate best-available science into predictive models and resilience investments.

Also noteworthy, the budget includes statutory changes which would make $200 million available annually to CalFIRE through the state’s Cap-and-Trade Program for forest health and fire prevention programs for an additional five years (current statutory authority for such funding is set to ‘sunset’ in Fiscal Year 2023-24).

In the hours after the governor’s proposed budget was released, CCA issued a statement lauding the budget’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Expenditure Plan, stating in part that “We applaud the Governor’s…financial commitment toward building resilient forests,” but that “These funds must be accompanied by legislative and regulatory reforms that encourage smarter forest and rangeland management practices that provide multiple benefits to wildlife, water quality and security, as well as climate mitigation and resilience.”

CCA is hyper-focused on advocating for those “legislative and regulatory reforms” throughout the 202122 Legislative Session, which convened on January 11. CCA is particularly focused this year on legislative proposals which increase the utilization of prescribed fire (including reforming liability laws which disincentivize prescribed burns), encourage grazing as a fine-fuels treatment on state-owned lands and enable ranchers to better protect their animals in the midst of wildfire emergencies.

As of press time, the California Legislature had only been in session five days (though already 518 bills— including at least 11 wildfire-related bills—have been introduced). CCA will continue to keep you apprised of developments on the budget and legislation throughout the coming months.

For forests resilient to wildfire, the time to act is now

by David Daley and Stuart Bewley for CalMatters

EDITOR’S NOTE: This following article is an opinion editorial column that was originally published by CalMatters prior to the release of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget on Jan. 8. The op-ed was reprinted by many news outlets in subsequent weeks.

In California, we learn from every fire season. This year, the lessons have been abundant and alarming.

The primary lesson is this: Because we are confronted with climate-driven dangers beyond our immediate control, coupled with decades of management that has left our forests and rangelands in an unnatural state, we must take urgent action to address those things we can control – forest health, the condition of our landscapes and the resiliency of communities in fire-prone areas.

We know what this fire season has wrought. In the months of August and September five of the six largest wildfires in history scorched this state. Combined, those five megafires burned over parts of 22 of our 58 counties. All told, more than 8,200 fires blackened more than 4 million acres in California – more than doubling the previous record for any year. Even now in December, wildfires are searing parts of Southern California.

The toll on human life has been enormous. Over the last four years, the fires have claimed 134 lives and destroyed more than 44,000 structures, forcing thousands of families from their homes. Just a few months ago, millions of Californians in all regions of the state were enveloped for days on end by air so thick with smoke and ash that it was unhealthful even to venture outside.

The toll on wildlife habitats and watersheds has been no less severe.

We know that the effects of climate change have made every fire season increasingly dangerous, as temperatures keep rising, our wildlands become more parched, and extreme wind events become more common.

California is committed to doing what it must to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent climate conditions from becoming even more calamitous, but these extreme conditions will persist – and continue to get worse – far into the future.

What we can control now is the conditions of our natural landscape. Urgent action is needed.

We have learned from this horrendous fire season that we need a new strategy. We must make additional investments and enact policy reforms to promote improved land management across California. We must proactively engage in land-management practices such as controlled burns and ecologicallyappropriate grazing that have proven to reduce the impact and threat of wildfires.

We urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to seek a supplemental appropriation of $500 million in January to provide critical funding to enable state and local agencies to take immediate actions to prepare for and prevent worsening fire events. This urgent appropriation would be in addition to firepreparedness funding to be included in the 2021-22 proposed budget.

The coalition making this request represents a cross-section of organizations committed to caring for the health of California’s natural resources and the safety of its people. It includes prominent environmental groups, the leading agricultural group representing California cattlemen, the California State Association of Counties and responsible-government advocacy groups.

Emergency funding appropriated in January should be directed to bolstering Cal-Fire grants to promote healthy forests, thinning of brush and prescribed burns.

If we learned anything from the air-quality crisis that choked much of California a few months ago, it is that we need to be much more proactive about burning under conditions of our choosing, rather than to allow uncontrolled wildfires to burn largely on the hottest, driest and windiest days of the year.

Additional funds can also be smartly invested in programs to safeguard vulnerable populations in fire-prone regions, including the hardening of homes, creation of defensible space and improving alert systems.

We acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of Newsom’s administration this year in fighting the disastrous wildfires in the midst of a pandemic. Unfortunately, the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis contributed in 2020 to the appropriation of insufficient funding for wildfire risk-reduction activities.

As the governor noted upon the approval of the first COVID-19 vaccines, “hope is on the horizon” in turning back this pandemic. Unfortunately, there is no hope of immunizing California from the harm of catastrophic wildfires. The best medicine we have to minimize their harm is to improve the health of our landscapes. It must be an urgent priority.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David Daley is chairman of the California Cattle Council and CSU Chico Professor Emeritus. Stuart Bewley is a Mendocino County forest and vineyard owner and a board member of Pacific Forest Trust.

DAVE DALEY STUART BEWLEY

Since the publishing of this op-ed, the media outlets who have reprinted it include: eu.redding.com Marin Independent Journal, Lompoc Record, Santa Maria Times, Santa Ynez Valley News, Recordnet.com, www.record-bee.com, Visalia Times Delta, Patch and The Desert Sun.