Creating a Collaborative Resourcing Team: Maintaining Opportunity Matrix and Getting Projects Shovel Ready
This project opportunity matrix and the RPP site are valuable community assets, but the information herein represents a snapshot of needs at this point in time and is not exhaustive. Building wildfire resilience in Santa Barbara County needs to be an ongoing proactive process. As identified projects are implemented, new needs and opportunities will emerge on an ongoing basis and need to be added to the Opportunity Matrix. The RPP team recommends a focused effort to create a Collaborative Resourcing Team that includes representatives from multiple agencies, nonprofits and funders to further develop these key pieces of our resilience system and then to maintain and put them to use.
LAFCO Regional Planning
LAFCO is seeking to develop a regional strategy for growth in the County through a planning effort with partners and cities.
Wildfire Resilience Summit
Create a regularly occurring opportunity for cross sector sharing learnings and collaborating on potential policy, actions and projects.
HOA Grazing Resilience Planning and Implementation
Develop and pilot a replicable process and framework for developing wildfire resilience plans for housing developments in high fire risk areas.
Bucket Brigade Academy
Create and implement an education program to build youth resilience to climate change induced crises. This project builds local capacity to quickly respond to wildfire and other disasters in a coordinated and responsive way.
Ecological Restoration Volunteers
Often the biggest challenge to habitat restoration and fuel mitigation is labor capacity. The Ecological Restoration Volunteers project would train volunteers and implement restoration projects such as invasive species mitigation and restoring and monitoring habitat.
Post Disaster Recovery Fund
Establish a fund for ecological and neighborhood community recovery and restoration.
Post Disaster Research Fund
Create a fund to study ecological/ecosystem recovery processes. Studies would include, at a minimum, a baseline biological assessment after every disaster, to identify sensitive natural communities, threats (i.e. invasive species vectors/vulnerabilities) and priorities for mitigation/restoration.
Fire Recovery: Creating a Fire Resilient Landscape
Develop a replicable framework for creating a fire-safe landscape with healthy ecological function in post-fire recovery areas …
Community Supported Grazing Summit
Host a series of convenings or summits to develop a framework for a community supported grazing program.
Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX)
Implement a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) and cooperative burns to provide experiential training that builds robust local capacity for…
Expand Cachuma Resource Conservation District Capacity
The Cachuma Resource Conservation District (CRCD) plays a critical role in our community as a partner to and bridge between farmers, ranchers and other landowners and conservation groups and agencies focused on the health of our land, water, soil, wildlife, agriculture and food systems.
Fire Fuel Management at Arroyo Hondo Preserve
In June of 2021, the Land Trust of Santa Barbara received a grant of $23,588 from the Coastal Conservancy for a targeted prescribed grazing project at the Arroyo Hondo Preserve, a project that the RPP team had identified through their outreach efforts to the Land Trust and helped facilitate funding for.
Researching Flammability Traits of Common SoCal Native Plants - The Fire Wise Project
The Fire Wise Project is a collaborative effort among multiple agencies and institutions in the Santa Barbara area, including UCSB, Westmont College, and the SB Botanic Garden.
Unified Fire Prevention Project Tracking Website
Santa Barbara County Fire Department (SBCFD) serves as Santa Barbara County's Cal Fire Unit and regularly produces an Annual Strategic Unit Plan as mandated by Cal Fire that inventories the fire prevention projects SBCFD has in various stages of its planning and implementation processes.
Santa Barbara Mountain Communities Defensible Space Plan
The Los Padres National Forest (LPNF) undertook a planning effort to identify, prioritize and plan a series of fire prevention and mitigation activities to reduce the risk of wildfire to mountain communities including West Camino Cielo, Painted Cave and Rosario Park.
City of Guadalupe LeRoy Park Fuel Reduction
Guadalupe City leaders noted that an area next to Leroy Park and adjacent to the Santa Maria River is considered a high fire risk to nearby vulnerable population concentrations.
Expanded Countrywide Chipping Program for High Risk WUI Neighborhoods
Reducing combustible vegetation in the immediate vicinity of homes, other buildings, infrastructure and transit corridors is one of the most effective actions available for fire risk reduction in the county.
Fine Scale Mapping of Critical County Resources
A key SBC Fire Department leader shared that Santa Barbara County needs to increase the pace and scale of fine scale mapping of built and natural resources to facilitate effective planning and avoid unnecessary conflicts.
Dangermond Preserve Fire Resilience Projects
The Nature Conservancy stewards the 24,000-acre Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve (JLDP) at Point Conception. JLDP is of biological and cultural significance regionally and globally.