On-the-ground companions all through the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s service space have jumped on the elevated funding accessible for wildfire- and climate-resilience initiatives.
For the reason that passage of California’s landmark 2021 funds, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) has witnessed an outpouring of enthusiasm from our companions, who seem ready to extend the tempo and scale of forest restoration.
Since June 2021, we now have obtained a document $100 million in funding requests for wildfire- and climate-resilience initiatives, practically two-times the funding that SNC has made accessible.
SNC funding on observe to be totally dedicated in 2022
In 2021, SNC obtained $80 million in state funding from the early motion wildfire resilience bundle and the wildfire and local weather resilience packages within the Fiscal 12 months 2021-22 funds. We’ve directed these funds to 3 grant applications.
Early Motion Wildfire Resilience Grants
In Could 2021, in response to the intense severity of the 2020 wildfire season, Governor Newsom permitted an early motion wildfire resilience bundle that included $19 million for SNC.
We acted shortly to place early motion funds to work. By July—solely three months later—the funding was totally dedicated to fifteen shovel-ready forest health- and wildfire-resilience initiatives. Actually, SNC obtained $38.3 million in proposals for $19 million accessible.
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The message from our regional companions was clear: they’re prepared for funding.
Whereas a number of the initiatives SNC funded with early motion have been stalled by final 12 months’s fires, the brief winter enabled others to jumpstart this 12 months’s area season. In Plumas and Lassen counties, work on the Bootsole Forest and Watershed Restoration Mission—which skilled each useful and high-severity impacts from the Dixie Hearth—is already underway, as is the subsequent section of the 28,000-acre North Fork American River French Meadows Mission in Placer County.
Tom Esgate of the Lassen Hearth Secure Council, the group main the Bootsole undertaking, talks to SNC workers a few previous partnership that helped shield properties close to Susanville in the course of the 2020 Sheep Hearth.
2021 Wildfire Resilience Funding
Amid one other record-breaking fireplace season, in September 2021, lawmakers finalized one other wildfire resilience bundle, this time allocating $50 million to the SNC. In growing an expenditure technique for these funds, SNC responded to 2 concerns.
First, with the enactment of SB 208 on January 1, 2022, our service space grew by about 2 million acres to a grand complete of 27 million acres. By launching our preliminary grant spherical in January, we ensured that new elements of Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity counties have been in a position to entry the funds.
Second, to assist our companions do enterprise extra effectively and extra successfully, we break up our funding into two grant rounds providing roughly $25 million apiece. Doing so creates certainty about future funding alternatives and affords extra time to initiatives within the ultimate levels of growth.
As soon as once more, the response from the area illustrates that our companions are ready for wildfire-resilience funding.
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The $23.75 million grant spherical, launched in January 2022, generated 30 undertaking proposals requesting slightly below $43 million. Workers funding suggestions will go to SNC’s Governing Board in June and September. At these conferences, we anticipate awarding the total $23,750,00 accessible.
In June, we may even ask our Board to approve the discharge of the second spherical of funding, making a further $23.75 million accessible for Wildfire Restoration and Forest Resilience grants.
Based mostly on the demand for undertaking funding that we now have seen up to now 12 months, we anticipate that our full $50 million wildfire-resilience appropriation might be one hundred pc dedicated by the top of 2022.
SNC leads a tour with the Division of Water Assets within the Dixie Hearth burn scar space. The tour targeted on high-severity fireplace impacts to the Feather River Watershed, the first water supply for California’s State Water Mission.
2021 Local weather Resilience Funding
To enrich the numerous funds allotted to forest well being and wildfire resilience, SNC is directing the $11.1 million for regional local weather resilience to our Strategic Conservation and Vibrant Recreation and Tourism grant applications.
These applications advance local weather resilience in a wide range of methods, together with enhancing habitat connectivity, stewarding carbon shops or water sources, defending essential pure or cultural websites, and increasing recreation entry. Additionally they assist the state’s 30×30, nature-based local weather options, and access-for-all priorities.
Following our Board’s approval of grant pointers, SNC issued a request for proposals in March. We obtained 48 idea proposals for a complete of $19.3 million. Workers suggestions to allocate roughly $10.5 million will doubtless go to SNC’s Governing Board in December.
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If extra local weather resilience funding turns into accessible within the upcoming funds 12 months, SNC will be capable of open extra grant alternatives on a rolling foundation.
The Watershed Enchancment Program (WIP) is a regional technique
In all its funding selections, SNC’s overarching technique is to construct an ecosystem of high-impact initiatives and strong organizations that may obtain the targets of the Watershed Enchancment Program and advance state priorities all through the Sierra Nevada and California Cascade areas.
We do that by sustaining give attention to 4 cross-cutting priorities—forest and watershed well being, strategic lands conservation, vibrant tourism and recreation, and neighborhood resilience—and by assembly our companions the place they’re, whether or not that’s organizing their first collaborative assembly or main their tenth restoration undertaking.
To maximise the affect of all state {dollars} invested within the Sierra Nevada, we additionally assist our Regional Forest and Hearth Capability Program (RFFCP) grantees (who obtain funding for capability constructing, undertaking growth, and regional planning) subsequently entry undertaking planning and implementation grants from the SNC and different state- and federal-funding sources. This helps be certain that capability and planning investments translate instantly into on-the-ground resilience.
Latest outcomes of SNC’s work display the success of this strategy. Final 12 months alone, we witnessed how fuels therapies alongside Freeway 50 protected 7,500 individuals in Pollock Pines and Sly Park from the Caldor Hearth and the way a 3,500-acre prescribed fireplace within the Caples watershed redirected the Caldor Hearth round it.
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These initiatives have been designed by locals and funded by the SNC and different state and federal businesses. The undertaking pipeline can be rising: RFFCP grantees have already used capacity-building investments to submit greater than $60 million in requests for undertaking funding.
These successes and extra, together with prescribed fireplace coaching alternatives for tribal members, big sequoia safety, and post-fire wooden utilization, are documented in SNC’s 2021 Annual Report.
With the prospect of extra state and federal funding directed towards forest well being and wildfire resilience, SNC is assured that our regional companions will stay ready for motion.
SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit early Sunday morning (Nov. 24).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 20 Starlink spacecraft — 13 of which are capable of beaming service directly to smartphones — lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday at 12:25 a.m. EST (0525 GMT; 9:25 p.m. on Nov. 23 local California time).
The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff as planned, touching down on the SpaceX droneship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean.
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The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on the deck of a droneship shortly after launching 20 Starlink internet satellites to orbit from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Nov. 24, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)
It was the 15th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Twelve of those flights have been Starlink missions.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage hauled the 20 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, deploying them there about an hour after liftoff as planned, SpaceX reported in a post on X.
Sunday’s launch was the 115th Falcon 9 flight of the year. Nearly 70% of those liftoffs have been devoted to building out Starlink, the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.
The megaconstellation currently consists of more than 6,600 active satellites, and, as Sunday’s mission shows, it’s growing all the time.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
SONOMA COUNTY – A man died when he was found in a flooded vehicle after an atmospheric river dumped heavy rain in Northern California, authorities said.
In Sonoma County’s Guerneville, first responders responded to a report around 11:30 a.m. Saturday for a vehicle that was seen in floodwaters near Mays Canyon Road and Highway 116.
The caller believed that at least one person was inside the vehicle.
When crews arrived, they said the vehicle was recovered but a man was pronounced dead at the scene. He has not been identified.
The Russian River, which flows through Guerneville, reached the flood stage on Friday evening and exceeded what was forecasted.
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This area went into a flood warning around 2 p.m. Friday and was still in place as of Saturday afternoon.
Guerneville is about 75 miles north of San Francisco.
Around 8:45 a.m. Saturday in Santa Rosa, a man was found dead in Piner Creek just south of Guerneville Road, the police department said. His death is being investigated.
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Brandon Downs
Brandon Downs is a digital content producer at CBS Sacramento.
Laura Richardson emerged the victor of the competitive, costly and feisty election to win a South Los Angeles seat in the state Senate — completing her political comeback more than 10 years after a tumultuous tenure in the House of Representatives.
Richardson narrowly won the race against Michelle Chambers, a community justice advocate who faced accusations of misconduct in prior public office. The Associated Press called the race Friday after weeks of ballot counting.
The contest between two Democrats with similar social policies but differing views on crime and business attracted huge spending by special interests.
Independent expenditure committees poured more than $7.6 million into the race, making it the most expensive election for state Legislature this year, according to California Target Book, a political database. Negative campaigning dominated the race as business interests and labor unions battled for their favored candidate.
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Richardson, a moderate Democrat, will join a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature. But Republicans are on track to flip three legislative seats this year, one in the Senate and two in the Assembly.
Richardson’s biggest supporters were businesses, including PACs funded by oil companies, and law enforcement associations that said they advocated for candidates who shared their beliefs on free enterprise and public safety. Meanwhile, Chambers’ biggest portion of support came from healthcare workers and teachers unions, who spent millions of dollars backing her.
Chambers wrote in a statement she was “proud of the campaign we ran,” thanking supporters who canvassed, phone-banked or cast votes for her “vision of better jobs, better wages and a California that works for everybody, not just the wealthy and well-connected.”
“This was the closest state senate race in the state, but unfortunately it appears that we will fall just short of victory,” she added. “Our people-powered efforts were not quite enough to overcome millions of dollars in outside spending on lies from the oil and tobacco industry and their allies.“
Richardson will succeed Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) in the 35th District, which encompasses the cities of Carson, Compton and stretches down to the harbor. Bradford, who had endorsed Chambers, said he believed both candidates were “qualified to do the job.”
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Bradford, who championed reparations legislation during his tenure, hoped the future senator would be “willing to meet with all factions of the community, because it’s a great diverse need in this district.”
“I’m also deeply sad to see how negative this campaign was, probably one of the most negative campaigns I’ve experienced in my 30-plus years of being involved with elections,” he said. “I just hope that we can come together after such a negative campaign, regardless of who the victor is, and understand that we have to work together.”
Richardson and Chambers took aim at each other’s past controversies. For Chambers, who had picked up the endorsement of various state and local elected officials, opposition groups seized on a criminal misdemeanor charge from 30 years ago. She was also accused of bullying and intimidation from her time as a Compton City Council member, allegations that she has repeatedly denied.
Richardson faced criticism over her tenure in Congress, where a House Ethics Committee investigation found her guilty in 2012 of compelling congressional staff to work on her campaign. The committee report also accused Richardson of obstructing the committee investigation “through the alteration or destruction of evidence” and “the deliberate failure to produce documents.”
Richardson admitted to wrongdoing, according to the report, and accepted a reprimand and $10,000 fine for the violations. She previously said that during her time in Congress, Republicans frequently targeted members of the Black Caucus. After she lost her reelection bid for a fourth term, Richardson said she worked at an employment firm to improve her managerial skills and has recognized previous mistakes.
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“It’s been said voters are very forgiving, and if you stand up and you accept responsibility and you improve in the work that you do — we need people who’ve been through things, who understand what it’s like to have had difficulties,” she previously told The Times. “And so that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t shy away from it.”
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