CAL FIRE seeks to significantly increase fuels management, fire reintroduction, and reforestation of forests degraded by overcrowding, drought, pest infestation, and catastrophic fire.
Donor Name: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE)
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/28/2023
Size of the Grant: $7 million
Details:
The Forest Health Program addresses the risk to California’s forests from extreme disturbance events including catastrophic wildfires, drought, and pest mortality.
All Forest Health projects must have climate benefits from treatment activities, avoided future wildfire and fossil fuel use, and/or reforestation and/or growth and yield of remaining vegetation. Applicants are required to submit supporting documentation to enable CAL FIRE staff to validate benefits using the Forest Health Quantification Methodology and Calculator Tool developed by CAL FIRE and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
These events are the result of climate change, forest overcrowding, past land management practices, and an increasing number of people living in the wildland and urban interface.
CAL FIRE’s Forest Health Program awards funding to landscape-scale land management projects that achieve the following objectives:
- Restore forest health and disaster resilience to California’s forests.
- Protect upper watersheds where California’s water supply originates.
- Promote long-term storage of carbon in forest trees and soils.
- Minimize the loss of forest carbon from unnaturally severe disturbance events.
- Further the goals of the California Forest Carbon Plan, California’s Natural and Working
- Lands Implementation Plan and AB 32 Climate Change Scoping Plan
Funding Information
Eligible Forest Health projects must be large capacity, landscape-scale, with multiple benefits. The minimum grant amount requested for management activity projects should be no less than $750,000, with a maximum allowable request of $7 million.
Project Activities
Project activities funded by CAL FIRE’s Forest Health Grant Program may include:
- Forest fuels reduction
- Prescribed fire
- Pest management
- Reforestation
- Biomass utilization
- Conservation easements and/or land acquisition through the Forest Legacy Program
- Research through the Forest Research Program
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible applicants include:
- Local, state, and federal agencies including federal land management agencies;
- Universities;
- Special districts;
- Native American tribes;
- Private forest landowners; and
- Non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations (e.g., fire safe councils, land trusts.)
For more information, visit Forest Health Grants.
