A recent grant of nearly $4 million from the Wildlife Conservation Board to the Upper Mokelumne River Watershed Authority (UMRWA) will complement earlier funding from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) and CAL FIRE to allow the organization to complete fuel-reduction efforts on more than 25,000 acres within the Mokelumne River watershed.
As only phase one of a much larger effort to improve forest health across 250,000 acres within the watershed, strategic funding from state agencies to well-established partners like UMRWA is helping to dramatically increase the pace and scale of forest restoration in the Sierra-Cascade. This increase is in direct response to the escalation of climate and wildfire risks.
“It was about seven or so years ago when we really started getting into forest health,” said Richard Sykes, executive officer with UMRWA, a joint-powers authority focused on stewarding the natural resources in the Upper Mokelumne River watershed. “There were a few fires that woke people up back then. For us, what woke us up was the Rim Fire, which was just north of us that burned over 200,000 acres. So, now, all of a sudden, we’re not talking about small fires, we’re talking about watershed-size fires.”
Established in 2000, UMRWA is a public agency dealing with water issues within the Mokelumne River watershed. Initially, forest health was not one of the agency’s main priorities. This changed, however, when large destructive wildfires began to impact headwater forests creating both water quality and supply challenges across the state, including problems related to massive post-fire increases in sediment flowing into the rivers and reservoirs of neighboring water systems.
Large fires turn focus from small projects to landscape-scale efforts
This is when UMRWA and partners, such as the Eldorado National Forest and Stanislaus National Forest, which own and manage the land within the watershed, knew it was time to start talking about restoring forest health and wildfire resilience on a larger scale.
“We started out with small projects, in large part funded by the SNC. Over the years we realized we don’t really want to be just doing a little bit here, a little bit there. We needed a plan that allowed us to put our arms around all the Forest Service property within the watershed,” said Sykes.
Through that redirection and focus came the Mokelumne Amador Calaveras Forest Health and Resilience Project. Planning for phase one, which will reduce fuels on roughly 25,600 acres, is already completed thanks to a grant from the SNC—and UMRWA and partners have already implemented restoration work on roughly 21 percent of the project area.
“Phase one is going well. We’re not even two years in from the environmental and planning review and we already have funding to get 25 percent done. Not bad, I think. And we’ll add another 1,000 (acres) or so with that WCB grant,” Sykes added, enthusiastically.
While work continues on phase one, UMRWA and partners are already planning phase two of this forest-health plan, which will cover 225,000 additional acres. According to Sykes, they are already deep into studying the landscape and analyzing what areas need addressing to reduce potential fire severity and help protect both wildland-urban interface areas and areas of high-value, such as spotted owl habitat.
“Maybe by late summer or early fall we’ll have our draft Environmental Impact Statement,” Sykes said. “We are probably looking to take action on 100,000 acres within the watershed, because, as you know, some of that landscape doesn’t pose a threat of catastrophic fire and some areas have already been thinned out or the slope is too great, which makes it too expensive and dangerous.”
Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program funding key to planning big
With the increase in size and severity of many modern-day wildfires, it didn’t take rocket science for those at UMRWA to realize the scale of forest-health and wildfire-resilience work in the watershed needed to be increased. Ensuring the organization had the ability to plan and participate in these much larger projects, however, only came about after funding from the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program (RFFCP).
Led by the California Department of Conservation, the RFFCP is designed to support local and regional efforts to assess the resilience of forests and communities, identify forest health and wildfire-prevention priorities, build local partner capacity, and help organizations and tribal entities plan and develop fuel-reduction projects across California. The SNC is responsible for allocating RFFCP funds to capacity-building activities across the Sierra-Cascade and provided funding that helped UMRWA to go from small projects to more substantial efforts, such as the Amador Calaveras Forest Health and Resilience Project.
“The RFFCP was absolutely essential to kicking off the planning and funding for phase one of this project,” said Sykes. “Once we got phase one planned, we attracted more funding from other organizations, such as CAL FIRE, the SNC, and the WCB. The RFFCP is what allowed us to be strategic and plan at scale. Without funding from that program and our UMRWA membership, we wouldn’t be talking about the work we are doing at scale.”
Strong community partnerships make landscape-scale work possible
Another organization that helped—and continues to help—spearhead projects small and large is the Amador Calaveras Consensus Group (ACCG).
This community-based group was first convened after former SNC Executive Officer Jim Branham met with former Calaveras County Supervisor Steve Wilensky and current Sierra Business Council president Steve Frisch. Their plan was to bring together state and federal agencies, business owners, nonprofit organizations, elected officials, and private individuals to discuss the most pressing environmental, economic, and community issues within the region.
After UMRWA signed a Master Stewardship Agreement with the U.S. Forest Service in 2016 to serve as lead partner for fuel reduction and forest-health restoration efforts within the watershed, the ACCG became its regional partner to help implement projects in order to improve the health and wildfire resilience of Upper Mokelumne River forests.
“The ACCG is a collaborative group that has a triple bottom line mission: create fire-safe communities, healthy forests and watersheds, and sustainable local economies,” said Michael Pickard, south central area representative with the SNC. “UMRWA is an ACCG member that has completed many projects funded by the SNC that improve the Mokelumne River watershed.”
Members and staff at UMRWA and the strong partnerships the organization has built up over the years, complemented by strategic funding, have led to the ability to plan and implement much-needed restoration work within the upper Mokelumne River watershed. What started with small projects of just a few hundred to a few thousand acres years ago has evolved into efforts that will span across 250,000 acres.
More investment will help get the job done
This dramatic increase is much appreciated by many people, communities, and organizations in the area, including federal partners who own and manage the land.
“UMRWA’s ability to secure grant funding and manage contracting as part of our stewardship agreement expands our capacity to get work done on a larger scale,” said Linda Helm, Amador District Ranger on the Eldorado National Forest.
Since the Mokelumne River watershed is home to extraordinary wildlife, fishery, scenic, and recreational value, and a source of drinking water for Amador, Calaveras and San Joaquin county communities, and for roughly 1.4 million East Bay residents, protecting this region is essential to all Californians.
This is true for other large landscapes and watersheds across the Sierra-Cascade and the state. With an increase in the size and severity of wildfires, keeping up resilience efforts to match the scale of modern megafires depends on strong partners ready for long-term, significant investments. With the help of organizations, such as CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service, the SNC has developed a comprehensive landscape investment strategy, which includes a Landscape Grant Pilot Program.
This helps identify large landscapes across the Sierra-Cascade that need forest health and wildfire resilience work—as well as the local and regional organizations ready and able to get the job done, but lack funding.
This includes organizations, such as UMRWA and its close partners.
“Our goal is to complete 4,000 acres per year, but we want as many people and help in here getting this valuable work done across the landscape,” Sykes said. “We’re not here to make work for UMRWA. The goal is to have the watershed reasonably protected from large-scale, severe wildfire that does significant, long-term damage to the forest or significantly impacts any communities adjacent to or within these two incredible forests.”