The final funding step has been taken for another wildfire fuels reduction project in Nevada County. The Wildlife Conservation Board has voted to grant close to two-point-four million dollars for implementation of the 625-acre Sierra Foothills Resilience Project. That’s after already approving planning funding in 2021. Local Office of Emergency Services Senior Administrative Analyst, Alex Keeble-Toll, says it’s a partnership with the Sierra Streams Institute. It’s also a direct collaboration with landowners across property boundaries. It features 300 private parcels in the Jones Bar Firewise Community, which has 85 property owners. There’s also some BLM land as well as several other important structures…

click to listen to Alex Keeble-Toll

Keeble-Toll says the Project will promote a diversity of different types of vegetation, with an eye toward what will be most successful, given warming temperatures and the prospect of drought….

click to listen to Alex Keeble-Toll

In addition to encouraging a diversity of flora, the project is also designed to create a variety of vegetation arrangements, such as “clumps” and “gaps”, or vegetation islands, with the forest, to reduce wildfire severity and also to enhance wildlife habitat. Keeble-Toll says work should begin sometime next year.