FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2023
Media Contact:
Sky Biblin, Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force
Albert Lundeen, California Natural Resources Agency
D’Artanyan Ratley, USDA Forest Service
New beta statewide tracking system brings local, state and federal wildfire resiliency projects into one place to reflect significant progress
(Sacramento, CA) – Today, the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force (Task Force) launched the beta version of a first-of-its-kind Interagency Treatment Dashboard that displays the size and location of state and federal forest and landscape resilience projects in California.
The dashboard offers a one-stop-shop to access data, provide transparency, and align the efforts of more than a dozen agencies to build resilient landscapes and communities in California. It reports treatment activities such as prescribed fire, targeted grazing, uneven-aged timber harvest, mechanical and hand fuels reduction, and tree planting. Users can sort treatments by region, county, land ownership and more.
“Thanks to historic funding from our Legislature and Governor Newsom, over 1,000 wildfire resilience projects are in motion across the state to protect communities and our diverse landscapes from catastrophic wildfire,” said California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot, co-chair of the Task Force. “Now we can track our progress like never before through this public Interagency Dashboard. It identifies where projects are happening, what kind of work is happening in a given location, and how much overall resilience work is being done. It’s one more step forward in building a comprehensive, durable approach to increasing our wildfire resilience in years to come.”
“This dashboard delivers a new tool for collaboration among agencies and communities,” said U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien, who co-chairs the Task Force with Secretary Crowfoot. “Having access to treatment information in this format will allow us to coordinate landscape scale activities aimed at restoring and enhancing ecosystem resilience.”
The dashboard compiles data from a broad range of organizations and government departments—many of which have different reporting requirements guiding how they capture information. While individual reporting tools and data will sometimes differ from this statewide snapshot, the dashboard brings these different reporting approaches together as a single and streamlined reporting tool. Key differences are addressed in the dashboard website FAQs.
“It takes everyone to create a more wildfire resilient California and this dashboard reflects the strides being made to get us there,” said CAL FIRE Director and Fire Chief Joe Tyler. “This dashboard shows how far we’ve come, the significant efforts underway, and our firm commitment to future work. As our many partners share data and outcomes to a central place, the mission of protecting communities and natural resources will remain the common thread driving our work. This new tool will also provide first responders a snapshot of where treatment has occurred to help inform fire suppression efforts.”
The dashboard is an important step to increase the pace and scale of statewide actions addressing California’s wildfire crisis and is a key deliverable of the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, issued by the Task Force in January 2021.
The beta version of the dashboard will continue to be refined to include additional data, including projects by local and tribal entities, along with revisions based on public feedback. An official launch is expected in spring 2024 with more complete data on projects implemented in 2022.