California Wildfire Disaster Recovery

Overview

The conservation goals and funding priorities of the California Wildfire Disaster Recovery ranking pool are to provide immediate post fire resource protection and public safety in areas severely burned by 2020 catastrophic fires.  Due to extreme fire behavior, unprecedented landscape scale fires, and wind events, the impact to California’s forests has been widespread and destructive. Events following the damage from fires can be detrimental to watersheds, public safety, and long term recover of these landscapes. Responding quickly after a fire and offering select practices may offer a long-term solution to address the long- lasting impacts of high intensity fires.

Priority areas include agricultural land or non-industrial private forestland, in any county impacted by a wildfire, where short-term natural recover is unlikely and detrimental effects would result in irreversible impacts. The primary focus of this pool is to reduce the immediate impacts of the fires related to soil erosion; hazard trees, accumulation of fire hazard debris, and invasion by noxious weeds

Soil erosion: The potential for severe soil erosion may occur because high burn intensity fires can destroy plant material and the litter layer that protects the soil from eroding during severe rainstorms and moving off- site to surface water bodies, roads and other sites. In locations of high erosion hazards that threaten human and environmental values, immediate action to control soil erosion may be needed. Treatment actions include using woody residues to slow runoff water, installing erosion control structures, spreading straw, reseeding, and repairing access roads and culvert systems severely damaged during fire suppression activities and subsequent erosion events.

Public safety hazard trees and fire hazard debris: Treatments that address dead and dying hazard trees, and other burned vegetation, that are an immediate public safety hazard will be prioritized over treatments that address accumulation of excess flammable woody biomass.  Woody debris can inhibit fire-area restoration efforts, such as reforestation, to reestablish a healthy, fire resilient forest.  Practices that remove, reduce or reconfigure the excess woody debris will contribute to achieving immediate protection needs, public safety, and longer-term restoration goals.

Invasion by noxious weeds: Most post-burn forest and range sites are also susceptible to invasion by noxious weeds. Following catastrophic wildfires, noxious and non-native invasive plants often proliferate on post-burn sites. Absence of invasive species control, within one growing season of the fire undesired noxious weeds/shrub regeneration can capture sites where desired vegetation regeneration is not present. These weeds/shrub communities can be very aggressive and will dominate the site, increasing the intensity of actions such as herbicide application, mastication or brush raking to ensure the success of desired plantings.

Land Uses

The descriptions below are the general NRCS land use definitions - applications should fit within, but do not need to exactly match, these descriptions.

• Crop: Land used primarily for the production and harvest of annual or perennial field, forage, food, fiber, horticultural, orchard, vineyard, or energy crops.
• Forest: Land on which the primary vegetation is tree cover (climax, natural or introduced plant community) and use is primarily for production of wood products or non-timber forest products.
• Pasture: Land composed of introduced or domesticated native forage species that is used primarily for the production of livestock. Pastures receive periodic renovation and cultural treatments, such as tillage, fertilization, mowing, weed control, and may be irrigated. Pastures are not in rotation with crops.
• Range: Land used primarily for the production of grazing animals. Includes native plant communities and those seeded to native or introduced species, or naturalized by introduced species that are ecologically managed using range management principles.
• Farmstead: Land used for facilities and supporting infrastructure where farming, forestry, animal husbandry, and ranching activities are often initiated. This may include dwellings, equipment storage, plus farm input and output storage and handling facilities.
• Associated Agricultural Lands: Land associated with farms and ranches that are not purposefully managed for food, forage, or fiber and are typically associated with nearby production or conservation lands. This could include incidental areas, such as odd areas, ditches and watercourses, riparian areas, field edges, seasonal and permanent wetlands, and other similar areas.

Interested Applicants

For more information about EQIP, how to apply and program eligibility, interested applicants should contact a NRCS field office in the county which you own land or where you have an agricultural operation. 

Visit https://offices.sc.egov.usda.gov/locator/ to find the NRCS representative for your county.