Two weeks later, much of the same community gathered at the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Sierra Nevada focused meeting. Created by Governor Gavin Newson, this task force was designed to “bring together an unprecedented coalition of the best available resources for preventing catastrophic wildfires by creating healthier, more sustainable natural environments.” Preventing these fires and managing our forests is multifaceted. With today’s extensive technology and data at hand, many presentations emphasized the massive milestones we have made in tracking, mitigating, and fighting the catastrophic wildfires California has been experiencing. However, despite this progress, California still has significant room for improvement.

SBC’s president, Steve Frisch, spoke as a panelist during the “Resources for Resilience: Funding Landscape-Scale Conversation” presentation alongside Jonathan Kusel (Sierra Institute), Sherry Hazelhurst (USFS) and Angela Avery (Sierra Nevada Conservancy). During his presentation, Steve applauded many of the goals outlined by the Task Force and the state, such as the goal of treating one million acres per year, putting together the science needed, strategizing and creating the tools to execute these goals. However, Steve pointed out that there are many barriers still in our way. “What we did in the last two years was invest 1.3 billion dollars over two years in forest management and we treated maybe 250,000 acres of land, if we’re lucky,” Steve stated. “So in order to treat one million acres per year, we are going to need to invest about 3-5 billion dollars per year in wildfire.” Steve further explained that it is unrealistic to rely on solely state and federal funding for forest management and wildfires, because even with a historic $97 billion budget surplus, annual wildfire funding was only allocated about $600 million. In order to increase consistent annual funding, we are going to need to see increased participation from the private sector and non-profit organizations in a state-wide campaign to advocate to increase the level of funding coming out of the State of California as well as other funding sources.

SBC’s Government and Community Affairs Director, Stacy Corless, also serves on the executive committee of the task force. Find a summary of meeting highlights and resources here and learn more about the task force at wildfiretaskforce.org.

My immediate reaction to the two events was to feel hopeful and optimistic, but after a deeper reflection, those feelings transitioned into frustration and determination with the realization of how much work still needs to be done. While the hope and optimism is not lost, I, along with the rest of the SBC team, will take the ideas, techniques, and strategies gathered and use them in a path forward to ensure that our Sierra Nevada forests and communities continue to thrive for years to come.