Early support from SNC leads to critical federal funding for North Yuba

Photo: The town of Downieville is located on Highway 49 where the Downie River joins the North Yuba River. Surrounded by steep slopes with dense, overgrown forests and only one main road to enter and exit the region, the town has an extremely high risk of being negatively impacted by wildfire.

Just five years ago, the North Yuba River watershed was like many places in the Sierra Nevada, at high risk of suffering from a large and damaging wildfire and without a plan, or money, to meaningfully reduce that danger.

Today, the risk remains, but, thanks to early funding from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC), and the dedicated focus and hard work of the North Yuba Forest Partnership, the Tahoe National Forest has a comprehensive plan to restore 275,000 acres—and $160 million of federal funding to do it.

“The North Yuba watershed is experiencing a lot of overgrown timber stands that are not healthy, so we’ve been concerned about that area for quite some time, as well as the communities in the North Yuba,” said Eli Ilano, Forest Supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest, soon after receiving the news of the federal investment. “This type of project is a scale that has not been undertaken in California, let alone anywhere in the country. This was a big endeavor, and, incredibly, thanks to funding from the U.S. Forest Service, we can now begin implementation to restore this highly vulnerable and unhealthy watershed.”

SNC funds North Yuba landscape plan

The threat of fire and a desire to restore forest health and wildfire resilience throughout the 313,000-plus acre North Yuba River watershed has been on the minds of concerned locals and land managers for decades.

In 2018, those worries started to turn into a plan of action after the Sierra Nevada Conservancy awarded $500,000 to Sierra County to launch a fuels-reduction effort on 267 acres near the communities of Sierra City and Bassetts. The work and collaboration on that project helped solidify the formation of the North Yuba Forest Partnership and led to a $200,000 grant in 2020 to the South Yuba River Citizens League, one of nine organizations that make up the Partnership, for a detailed landscape plan to reduce fuels across 275,000 acres.

Now completed, it is a plan many are excited to finally see get done.

Massive federal investment due to planning and partnership efforts

The dedication of the North Yuba Forest Partnership and the fact that such a detailed, landscape-scale plan was already finished, were two main factors for why the North Yuba River watershed was selected as one of 10 regions for federal investment in 2022 as part of the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy.

Another reason, according to Roen, was seeing the communities and this extremely vulnerable watershed up close and in person.

“A risk assessment team from the federal Forest Service came out from (Washington) D.C. At that point, we were only committed something like $22 or $24 million,” Roen said. “They came out here and we toured the community of Greenville so they could see first-hand what could happen, and what did happen, to that community due to wildfire. The next day we toured Downieville and it became clear to them in a hurry that, while […]

Full article: sierranevada.ca.gov