Cal-FIRE has announced that up to $10 million in funding will be available for Wildfire Resilience Block Grants. Funding to support private forestland owners is provided through the Budget Act of 2021 and, according to the agency, supports California’s goals of improved forest health, resilience to climate change, and reduced forestland impacts due to devastating wildfires as outlined in California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan.
The purpose of the Wildfire Resilience Block Grant is to meet a set of forest health goals by providing grant funding to regional applicants who serve as aggregators to provide technical and financial assistance to groups of nonindustrial forestland owners in a specific region.
Eligible individual landowner sizes range from 3,000 to 5,000 acres. Under this grant, the grantee serves as the supervising entity, receives the grant from Cal-FIRE and then provides outreach, technical or financial assistance to nonindustrial forest landowners so they can conduct forest restoration or management activities on their property.
Cal-FIRE started accepting proposals on February 14th and proposals are due no later than April 1st, 2022.
A virtual workshop to introduce the Wildfire Resilience Block Grant Guidelines and the on-line application process will be held on February 24th, from 1:00 to 3:00p.m.
Additional application information including grant guidelines, eligibility requirements and deadlines can be found on Cal-FIRE’s website.
All grant work must be completed by March 30th, 2026.
Applicants are limited to counties, resource conservation districts, special districts, and 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations that have the capacity to deliver a forestry-based assistance program.