2025 Wildfire & Forest Resilience Directed Grant Program

Purpose

The primary focus of this Program is protecting people and communities. California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan: A Comprehensive Strategy identifies three goals that are strongly aligned with SNC’s Watershed Improvement Plan: healthy and resilient natural places, safe communities, and sustainable economies. This Program aims to support projects that result in a combination of multiple watershed, ecosystem, and community benefits.

Description

As of December 29, 2025, due to limited funds and overwhelming demand, we are not currently accepting proposals. Full Proposals already in development will be accepted until January 31, 2026, or as long as funding is available. This grant program is an immediate response to recent legislation and executive orders addressing California’s wildfire crisis. In November of 2024, California voters approved Proposition 4 (Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Act). In April 2025, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 100, which allocates $30.9 million from Proposition 4 to the SNC for the purposes of wildfire prevention and forest resilience. On March 1, 2025, Governor Newsom signed EO N-25-25 to ensure that wildfire-safety projects funded under Assembly Bill 100 benefit from streamlining under the Statewide Fuels Reduction Environmental Protection Plan (EPP) created in response to the Emergency Proclamation issued on March 1, 2025. To be eligible to receive a grant award from the SNC under this Program, projects must meet all of the following criteria: have completed environmental compliance or approval under the EPP; be an implementation project with on-the-ground improvements resulting in a clear, demonstrable, and enduring public benefit; be located within the Sierra-Cascade Region; be consistent with the SNC mission and program areas as defined in the SNC Strategic Plan; be consistent with the requirements of the funding source and budget provisions; and commence on-the-ground work no later than October 15, 2026. The primary activities of the project must include at least one of the following items: removal of hazardous, dead, and/or dying trees; removal of vegetation for the creation of strategic fuel breaks as identified by approved fire prevention plans; removal of vegetation for community defensible space; removal of vegetation along roadways, highways, and freeways for the creation of safer ingress and egress routes; removal of vegetation using cultural traditional ecological knowledge for cultural burning and/or prescribed fire treatments for fuels reduction; or improvements to previously established fuel breaks or fuels-modification projects. Recommendations may be made to the SNC Governing Board on a quarterly basis. Please review the full grant program guidelines here. The SNC may give favorable consideration to projects which: involve California Native American tribes; were developed under the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program; directly benefit SDAC, DAC, or Vulnerable Populations; engage a workforce-development effort; or enable the equitable geographic distribution of SNC resources.