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CALIFORNIA

CLIMATE

INVESTMENTS

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Project Updates

FUEL
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Bald & Eiler

Bald and Eiler reforestation projects were successful at planting 300,000 trees in May 2021. Since that time progress has been made on NEPA for both sites and about 500 acres of dead forest was treated. Plantings were sprayed with herbicide in summer 2021. Mastication began in fall of 2021.

Phase II

A new NEPA effort is underway for both areas. 2,200 acres are currently being planned for reforestation. In May of 2022 992 acres were planted at Bald and 141 at Eiler. 436 acres of spraying were completed on Eiler in July.

Manzanita Chutes

Manzanita Chutes, by Eskimo Hill, completed treatment on 125 acres this spring and saw an additional 847 acres by October with additional acreage to be added late 2021.

Phase II

Biomass and mastication of an additional 969 acres.

Tamarack fuel break

Tamarack fuel break is currently in progress with biomass removal and mastication on the 300’ wide fuel break. Additional chipping and mastication occurred throughout spring and summer and will continue next year. Currently 8 miles of the fuel break is completely masticated.  

Backbone Planning project

This project consists of completing surveys and NEPA and implementation.

This is a 3,680 acre parcel project in LaTour State Forest.

Jackrabbit Forest Health project

The Jackrabbit project, a large-scale thinning and mastication project near Burney completed Phase I of mastication. Phase II of mastication, which will seek to treat an additional 1,202 acres began this fall and continues into the spring. 

Whittington Forest Health project

Biomass removal on 500 acres and mastication on 200 acres of a 3,000 acre parcel of Lassen National Forest.

Northwest gateway

The Northwest Gateway is an 800 acre project within the boundary of Lassen Volcanic National Park and is expected to begin this fall. The project restores late-seral pine forests through ecological treatments. Treatments will protect California Spotted Owl and Northern Goshawk breeding territories from high intensity wildfire by reducing stand density and returning low to moderate severity fire to the landscape.

Education

Our Heavy Equipment Logging Operations/ Commercial DriversDriver’s License partnership with Shasta College is moving forward with this program successfully. Further programs and licenses are currently being developed.

Project Map

RATIONALE

The USFS and RCD have identified multiple restoration opportunities on public and private lands to increase forest resilience, accelerate reforestation of severely burned forests, and reduce the risk of future catastrophic fire impacts to both communities and natural resources. Forest thinning through the diameter class and other fuel treatments (e.g. mastication, prescribed fire) would be used to reduce forest biomass and surface fuels in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. This reduction would help to protect tree-based carbon stocks, improve growth rates and carbon uptake of residual trees, and minimize  greenhouse gas released in the instance of wildfire.

 

Reducing forest density and surface fuels are a key step towards building a resilient landscape. Thinning prescriptions were designed to restore forest structure and facilitate the widespread use of prescribed fire by removing biomass, reducing stand densities, and shifting species composition towards more drought- and fire-tolerant species. Thinning treatments would reduce inter-tree competition from limited water and nutrients, thereby reducing the risk of insect and disease-caused mortality and GHG emissions from dead and decaying trees. 

 

Prescribed under burning would be used to maintain the benefits of widespread thinning and to begin restoring fire as a process in forests throughout the project area. Prescribed burning would reduce surface and maintain the reduction in ladder fuels by reducing understory shrubs, small trees, and raising the live crown heights of residual larger diameter trees. As a result, fuel ignitability, ignition of tree crowns, rate of fire spread, and fire duration and intensity would be reduced. Creating favorable stand conditions across the landscape at scale would reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and associated adverse effects to air and water quality. If fires occur on the landscape, fire size and severity could be reduced, resulting in less GHG emissions when compared to fires that occur if forests are not treated. 

  

There are three local biomass facilities near the project area. Chips generated from the proposed projects would be utilized by local biomass facilities to generate energy and offset fossil fuel consumption. Controlled combustion results in demonstrated reduction not only of CO2 but of other GHGs (CH4, and CO) produced by incomplete combustion during in-woods burning. In addition, implementation of this project will enhance and create employment opportunities for local facilities, their employees, and the local businesses they utilize on a regular basis.

 

Several large fires recently occurred throughout the project leaving uncharacteristically large patches deforested. Planting treatments would be used to accelerate forested conditions across the landscape. Planting would favor fire tolerant species at wider spacing conducive to individual tree growth and reduced future fire risk as the plantation develops.  As trees grow, carbon would be sequestered, resulting in increased tree-based carbon storage through time, particularly when compared with carbon sequestered of shrub fields or partial natural regeneration.

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Funding for this project provided by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as part of the

California Climate Investments Program

CAL FIRE's Forest Health Grant Program awards Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds allocated by the legislature for California Climate Investments (CCI) to implement projects that seek to proactively restore forest health and conserve working forests, protect upper watersheds where the state's water supply originates, promote the long-term storage of carbon in forest trees and soils, and minimize the loss of forest carbon from large, intense wildfires.

Burney - Hat Creek Forest Health Project, is part of California Climate Investments,a statewide program that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing GHG emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment– particularly in disadvantaged communities.

The Cap-and-Trade program also creates a financial incentive for industries to invest in clean technologies and develop innovative ways to reduce pollution. California Climate Investments projects include affordable housing, renewable energy, public transportation, zero-emission vehicles, environmental restoration, more sustainable agriculture, recycling, and much more. At least 35 percent of these investments are located within and benefiting residents of disadvantaged communities, low-income communities, and low-income households across California.

For more information,

visit the California Climate Investments website at:

www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov.

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