Governor Newsom signs legislation investing additional $170 million to prevent catastrophic wildfires, issues executive order to fast-track projects

 Funding to conservancies includes:

• $30,904,000 to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy
• $23,524,000 to the California Tahoe Conservancy 
• $31,349,000 to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy 
• $30,904,000 to the State Coastal Conservancy
• $30,904,000 to the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy
• $23,524,000 to the San Diego River Conservancy

AB 100 implements the “early action” 2025 budget package to address items necessary to adopt this fiscal year. 

In addition, Governor Newsom signed an executive order to ensure that the wildfire safety projects funded under AB 100 benefit from streamlining under a previous emergency proclamation issued in March. Read the executive order here. In March, the Governor issued an emergency proclamation to cut bureaucratic red tape – including suspending CEQA and the Coastal Act – that was slowing down critical forest management projects.

These actions build on years of work to increase forest management and wildfire resilience in the state. It also follows the Governor’s executive order signed last month to further improve community hardening and wildfire mitigation strategies to increase neighborhood resilience statewide.

Governor Newsom took similar action in March 2019 to expedite forest management projects ahead of particularly challenging fire seasons in 2019 and 2020.

• Preventing wildfire through forest and land management. The state is investing $2.5 billion to ramp up and implement the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, increasing the pace of fuel reduction, prescribed fire, and forest health. 100% of the 99 key actions outlined in the plan are underway or completed. This is in addition to $200 million invested annually through 2028-29 for healthy forest and fire prevention programs.
• Using controlled burns to build community and forest resilience. California launched a strategic plan on beneficial fire to expand the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning to build forest and community resilience. Key goals from the plan are already in action to increase the use of prescribed fires, and prescribed fire activity has nearly doubled between 2021 and 2023.
• Tracking wildfire prevention. California recently unveiled newly updated, first-of-their-kind dashboards that will help Californians track the state’s wildfire prevention work.
• Early action. One of the very first executive actions Governor Newsom took after assuming office was to declare a state of emergency in response to wildfires in 2019. This order, in part, exempted critical wildfire and forest management projects from California’s environmental law (CEQA).

See all of Governor Newsom’s actions to increase wildfire resilience and forest management.