County approves $4.4 million for vegetation management programs

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved allocating $4.44 million in funding toward vegetation management work out of PG&E settlement funds.

Of the total sum, $3 million will be set aside for the county’s Vegetation Management Grant Program, funding projects such as prescribed fire programs, the creation of fuel breaks, grazing, education and public engagement. Funds allocated to the grant program today are in addition to $8.3 million that has supported 46 different projects since 2021.

“The 2019 floods followed by the Kincade fire taught us that high precipitation leads to robust vegetation growth,” said Supervisor James Gore, who sits on the Healthy Forests Ad Hoc committee. “The Vegetation Management Program will help us to address this challenge in the months to come.”

“These grants are empowering us as a community to steward our responsibility to the land,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, chair of the Board of Supervisors. “We’re seeing some amazing results already from the Vegetation Management Program, but there’s so much more we need to do to create truly resilient landscapes.”

Rounding out the total, $600,000 has been allocated toward capacity building for landowners and resource managers interested in fuel and resource management and technical assistance to organizations and communities working on wildfire resilience to encourage best management practices to protect the county’s communities and natural resources; $150,000 will go toward planning and prioritization tools such as the Sonoma Veg Map, Wildfire Fuel Mapper, the updated Sonoma County Community Wildfire Protection Plan and others; $400,000 is being set aside for workforce development and technical support to regional collaborative efforts such as Sonoma Coast Collaborative and Upper Mark West Watershed; and $290,000 will be used for leveraging state, federal and other funding sources to sustain the program beyond December 2023.

The recommended actions were generated by a collaborative effort of county departments and agencies, non-profit organizations, Resource Conservation Districts, resource management professionals, and Cal Fire, which provided these recommendations to the Healthy Forests Ad Hoc Committee managed by Supervisor Gore and Supervisor Lynda Hopkins.

The funding approved today comes from the 2017 PG&E settlement funds, of which the Board of Supervisors allocated $25 million to vegetation management in October 2020. Approximately $9.5 million still remains to be allocated from that initial sum.

For more information about the vegetation management grant program, visit sonomaopenspace.org/our-impact/vegmanagement/. Vegetation Management Coordinator Kim Batchelder is also available to answer specific questions at kim.batchelder@sonoma-county.org.

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Media Contact: 
Stuart Tiffen
Communications Specialist 
stuart.tiffen@sonoma-county.org 
(707) 565-1860
575 Administration Drive, Suite 104A
Santa Rosa, CA 95403