Wildfire Resilience Collaborative
Santa Barbara is rich in natural communities that are specifically adapted to its Mediterranean climate. These include coastal scrub, chaparral and foothill woodland plant communities, some of the world's most imperiled ecosystems. These habitats have evolved with fire for thousands of years. Now mega droughts and heat as a result of climate change are exacerbating catastrophic fire risk. Wildfire affects every person and every sector in our community; the scale and complexity of this problem requires every one of us to take action to advance our region’s resilience. We must learn to adapt and develop new strategies for learning and working together.
In response, the Cachuma Resource Conservation District, Community Environmental Council, McGinnis Environmental and LegacyWorks Group generated the Regional Priority Plan for Ecosystem and Wildfire Resilience (RPP) in 2021 to help Santa Barbara County better prepare for future wildfire and climate-related challenges. The team identified 50 priority projects representing the distilled wisdom of dozens of community leaders.
Read more about the history of the Regional Priority Plan
“If we implement the projects in the RPP over the next ten years we’ll be 90 percent of the way to building resilience to wildfire.”
Because wildfire is here to stay as a natural component of our native ecosystems, our partnership evolved into the Wildfire Resilience Collaborative to continue working with area agencies and organizations to advance and implement the projects defined within the Regional Priority Plan and identify additional resilience building projects throughout the county.
During 2023, the collaborative secured funding from the California Coastal Conservancy to launch the currently in progress Goleta Riparian Corridor Wildfire Risk Reduction & Restoration Project.
Other wildfire resilience building projects include: