CAL FIRE is announcing up to $8 million in funding available for Wildfire Resilience Block Grants to support private forestland owners.   Application guidelines, eligibility requirements, and deadlines are now available on the Wildfire Resilience Program website. Proposals can be submitted starting January 29, 2024, when the application portal will go live. Proposals are due no later than February 26, 2024, at 5 PM PST. All grant work must be completed by December 31, 2027. The purpose of the Wildfire Resilience Block Grant is to meet action items 1.10, 1.11, 1.13 and 1.14 of the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force Action Plan. Full details can be found on page 17 of the Action Plan.   For action item 1.10, applicants will provide for educational programming on the full range of forest management practices. Applicants submitting projects addressing action item 1.10 are limited counties, resource conservation districts, special districts, and 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations. There is $1 million dollars allocated for this category.   For action items 1.11, 1.13 and 1.14, applicants will provide for technical and financial assistance to groups of nonindustrial forestland owners ranging in size from 3 to 5000 acres in a specific region. Under this grant, the grantee will serve as a sub granting entity to deliver a program offering technical and financial assistance to nonindustrial forestland owners.  Applicants submitting projects addressing action items 1.11-1.14 are limited to Resource Conservation Districts and special districts capable of acting as lead agency for CEQA projects. These applicants must demonstrate they have the capacity to deliver a forestry based technical and financial assistance program to non-industrial forest landowners. There is $7 million dollars allocated for this category. Funding to support private forestland owners is provided through the Budget Act of 2022/23 and 2023/23 and supports California’s goals of improved forest health, resilience to climate change, and reduced forestland impacts due to devastating wildfires.

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CAL FIRE Business and Workforce Development Grants Solicitation

Hello Wood Products Subscribers,

CAL FIRE is announcing the opening of a new Business and Workforce Development Grants solicitation (2024 Q1). The Wood Products Team has posted updated Grant Guidelines (dated 01/14/2024 – linked here) to support this solicitation. We are now accepting applications for the 2024 Q1 review deadline!

What’s new:

• Up to $20 million available for Business and Workforce projects
• Only projects that will be completed by March 31, 2026, are eligible.
• This solicitation is funded with Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds (GGRF). This means:
• We’ve updated our application.
• Additional materials required for your application.
• Additional reporting required for grantees.

Please submit applications via the Business and Workforce Development 2024 Q1 Solicitation (linked here) by March 8, 2024, to be considered for the next round of awards. 

Visit CAL FIRE’s Wood Products and Bioenergy webpage  for more information.

Contact us at WoodProducts@fire.ca.gov

Cross Boundary Spatial Fire Planning — Community Scale Wildfire Resiliency — South Siskiyou County Partnerships

Hi All,

The Fire Safe Council of Siskiyou County will be meeting Wednesday January 10, 2024 starting at 5:30PM. Zoom link below. 

This month we have 2 very special guest speakers. Please don’t miss this one!

Agenda attached.

1) Eric Knapp: Research Ecologist, Pacific Southwest Research Station, USFS

For more information on Eric’s background and work see:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/about/people/eknapp

Eric plans to discuss research plots near Tenant with direct fire effects outcomes of fuels treatments, post Antelope fire of 2021. The following is the synopsis as stated on their research summary website:

 Fuel treatment effectiveness.

We are studying how thinning and prescribed fire treatments perform when impacted with wildfires burning under different weather conditions. One such example are the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area and Southern Cascades Fire and Fire Surrogate studies on the Klamath National Forest, both of which burned in the 2021 Antelope Fire. Remeasuring plots following the wildfire illustrates that treating both crown fuels with thinning and surface fuels with prescribed fire results in the best outcome.

2) Brian Murphy: Wildland Fire and Fuels Specialist, Mount Shasta-McCloud Management Unit (SMMU), Shasta Trinity NF.  Brian will bring the fuels effectiveness focus to the area surrounding Mount Shasta-McCloud vicinity (see map)

SMMU’s vegetation management outyear planning will help to ‘fill-the-gaps’ beyond the community defensible space project efforts. In several areas these FS projects will work in tandem with other entity work(i.e., Resource Conservation District, Land Trust, Timber Industry work). He will speak to upcoming projects in specific terms and explain their benefit in terms of effects on potential wildfire propagation.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83558907424?pwd=LzVTSC9pSmFQRVNlcEpEQ0lwVGk2dz09

Meeting ID: 835 5890 7424

Passcode: 782498

See you there!

Giselle Nova 
Coordinator,
Fire Safe Council of Siskiyou County
(530) 926-2089
(530) 859-0384 cell

See Agenda, attached.