NEVADA CITY, CALIF. (February 21, 2024) — Yesterday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the Biden-Harris Administration is investing nearly $500 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to expand work on the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy to reduce risk to communities, critical infrastructure and natural resources from the nation’s ongoing wildfire crisis. The Tahoe National Forest is slated to receive $16 million to continue critical wildfire risk reduction work on the North Yuba landscape. Identified as an area at high-risk for wildfire, the North Yuba landscape has now received over $178 million of Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding.
The North Yuba landscape includes the North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project, a 275,000-acre landscape-scale, multi-phase vegetation and fuels management project in the Yuba watershed that is planned to be implemented over the next 15 to 20 years. Through a variety of treatments like forest thinning and prescribed fire, the project aims to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, improve forest health and promote fire-adapted communities.
“The communities and resources within the North Yuba watershed are in urgent need of forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction work, fast,” said acting Tahoe National Forest Supervisor Matt Jedra. “We are thrilled for additional investment in the North Yuba landscape, but we know it is vital that we continue to invest year-over-year to increase the pace and scale of work in the North Yuba watershed and communities alike. We strive to continue to develop collaborative partnerships to help make that happen.”
The landscape has received national praise and significant funding thanks to planning and implementation partners that comprise the North Yuba Forest Partnership. The partnership formed in 2017 and has been working to advance critical forest restoration projects that reduce the risk of wildfire throughout the North Yuba watershed.
Earlier this year, the partnership was recognized as “Partnership of the Year” by the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region for its forest restoration work and collaboration on the North Yuba landscape. Partners include U.S. Forest Service-Tahoe National Forest, Yuba Water Agency, The Nature Conservancy, South Yuba River Citizens League, Camptonville Community Partnership, Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe, National Forest Foundation, Sierra County and Blue Forest.