Sierra Nevada Conservancy awards $3.1 million to protect watershed health and tree mortality

Funds from Proposition 1 – the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014 – has made possible $3.1 million in grants for ten projects from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Governing Board. The projects will help to restore forest and watershed health, decrease wildfire risk and lessen tree mortality.

The projects meet both the requirements of Proposition 1 as well as the goals and objectives of the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program, a large-scale restoration program designed to address ecosystem health in the Sierra Nevada. This is the fifth set of awards made under the SNC’s Proposition 1 grant program.

“Sierra forests are the source of more than sixty percent of California’s developed water supply, but these forests have experienced rapid and significant change,” says Jim Branham, Executive Officer for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. “The grants that were awarded by our board today are great examples of the kind of work we need to be encouraging across the entire Sierra to protect the source of California’s water.”

The ten projects receiving the Proposition 1 funds through the SNC include:

• El Dorado County – $476,709 for the Caples Creek Watershed Ecological Restoration Project. The El Dorado Irrigation District (EID) will complete forest management and restoration activities on 6,800 acres within the larger South Fork American River Watershed, which is the primary water supply for more than 110,000 people and businesses served by the EID.
• Lassen County – $250,000 for the Lassen Creek Watershed Restoration Project. The Honey Lake Valley Resource Conservation District will complete mechanical harvesting of small trees, hand thinning, pruning, mastication, and slash disposal on 250 acres across two privately owned properties located just north of the Lassen National Forest and within the Wildland-Urban Interface zone for the City of Susanville. Lassen Creek, the main drainage within this watershed and located within the project boundary, is a tributary to the Susan River, an important supply of agricultural water that drains into the 7,667-acre Honey Lake Wildlife Area wetland.
• Madera County – $488,320 will allow the Yosemite-Sequoia Resource Conservation and Development Council to complete high-priority conifer reforestation on 350 acres burned in the 2014 French Fire in Madera County. Reforestation will improve watershed conditions by restoring severely burned areas to forested conditions, thereby reducing sedimentation and turbidity within the headwaters and improving water quality for downstream users
• Mariposa County – $498,985 for the Gentry Creek Watershed Restoration Project. This grant to the Yosemite-Sequoia Resource Conservation and Development Council will treat approximately 300 acres of mixed-conifer timberland. The project will fall and remove all dead trees, and remaining slash will be masticated and spread on the forest floor. These activities will return the project area, which serves as the headwaters for Gentry Creek, a major tributary of the North Fork of the Merced River, to functional forest land that will aid in the protection of the downstream water supply.
• Nevada County – $74,550 for Rice’s Crossing Preserve Nonindustrial Timber Management Planning Project. This grant to the Bear Yuba Land Trust will complete a Nonindustrial Timber Management Plan for a 2,000-acre portion of the Rice’s Crossing Preserve, a 2,706 acre property owned by the Bear Yuba Land Trust. The Preserve is located within both the North and Middle Yuba River watersheds, which eventually feed into the Feather River and eventually the Sacramento River to the Delta.
• Placer County – $359,838 will fund the Placer County Resource Conservation District.  They will remove fire-killed trees and brush, restore approximately five acres of timber landings, and stabilize watershed slopes along a 13-mile stretch of the Rubicon River drainage between Hell Hole Reservoir and the Placer County Water Agency facilities at Ralston Afterbay.
• Plumas County – $74,576 for the Genesee Valley Watershed Improvement Project. The Plumas Audubon Society will complete wildlife and botanical surveys, a cultural resource inventory, and soils and hydrological analyses that will support the completion of environmental documentation on 618 acres on the Plumas National Forest and 221 acres on the privately owned Heart K Ranch. The project location is within Genesee Valley on Indian Creek, a significant tributary to the north fork of the Feather River.
• Plumas County – $73,312 for the Tásmam Kojóm Restoration Management Plan. The Maidu Summit Consortium and Conservancy will help complete an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to support future implementation of the Tásmam Kojóm Land Management Plan on Tásmam Kojóm, a 2,326-acre parcel that includes a meadow, streams, springs, and an overstocked mixed conifer forest, and is a culturally important place to the Mountain Maidu.
• Sierra and Nevada Counties – $362,538 for the Forest Health and Watershed Improvement through Noxious Weed Management project.  The Truckee River Watershed Council will survey 18,000 acres for high-priority noxious weeds, remove infestations of weeds on 1,500 acres, and revegetate native grasses, forbs, and shrubs on 450 acres on U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife-managed lands in Sierra and Nevada counties. The project area was designated as high-priority due to the habitat values and threats from potential wildfire to the municipal water supply at Prosser, Boca, and Stampede Reservoirs.
• Tuolumne County – $496,000 for the Lyons-South Fork Watershed Forest Resiliency Project. The Tuolumne Utilities District will complete forest thinning and fuel reduction treatments on 200 acres within the Stanislaus National Forest in Tuolumne County.  This will, allow for the forest to better withstand ongoing drought and bark beetle attacks, and protect critical ditch and flume infrastructure which act as the primary drinking water conveyance system for 90 percent of the residents of Tuolumne County.

“It is important that we invest in projects like these through the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program because they help make our forests more resilient to insects, drought, large, damaging wildfires, and disease,” says Randy Moore, U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Regional Forester.

The overall program is being coordinated by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and the U.S. Forest Service. It is designed to increase the pace and scale of restoration across the Sierra by increasing funding, addressing policy barriers, and increasing the infrastructure needed to support restoration. Thirty-two Proposition 1 projects totaling $9,881,830 have been funded by the SNC in support of the restoration goals of the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program.