‘Funded by SNC, the BCFSC spearheads key work’
“The BCFSC and the SNC have been working together for over a decade to make local communities and landscapes more resilient to fire.
Early efforts resulted in pockets of resilience during the catastrophic 2018 Camp Fire, saving a school and neighborhood. Recent increases in state wildfire resilience funding have allowed the BCFSC, with help from SNC and others, to put in place more comprehensive protections around Cohasset.
The SNC’s involvement around Cohasset began in 2020 with an SNC planning grant called the Cohasset Watershed Forest Resilience Project. That project created a 3,750-acre forest management plan for Cohasset and completed environmental permitting for fuel-reduction treatments on nearly 7,000 acres of privately owned lands, including much of the defined management area. Two years later, thanks to the historic wildfire funding included in the California Budget Act of 2021, the SNC was able to provide funding for completion of 630 acres of fuels treatments called for by the plan, much of which was completed prior to the start of Park Fire in July 2024.
The BCFSC worked closely with other funding agencies, including CAL FIRE, to complete other components of the forest-management plan, and layered these defensible space protections with home hardening and chipping programs. Together these efforts gave Cohasset residents and emergency responders the tools they needed to protect lives and property.”
Communities protected from Park Fire _ Sierra Nevada Conservancy