LegacyWorks Santa Barbara 2022 Wildfire Resilience Portfolio
As we reconnect to share our progress over the past year, we would like to reflect on the brave work of our Santa Barbara partners and community members. Thanks to fruitful collaborations, our communities - diverse in ecology, economy, and culture - are rethinking what is necessary to ensure a healthy, productive, and resilient future where all living things may prosper. Together, we are finding new ways of working across geographic, social, political, and institutional divides. We are learning about how different perspectives and thoughts around shared concerns can improve our solutions and increase the impact of our work. We are learning how to better collaborate with traditionally underserved communities. And we are looking beyond legalistic frameworks for preserving and protecting land to address broad cultural and environmental concerns, such as climate change and justice.
Thanks to your support, LegacyWorks continues to grow a diverse portfolio of projects in the Santa Barbara region. Over the past year, we have added new depth to our Santa Barbara team and broadened our partnerships. Because we have so much to share with you, we’ve decided to create two separate reports with this first report focusing on our Wildfire Resilience work. The second report which will come out in the new year will focus on other work we are doing to advance Community Resilience. All of these efforts require ongoing stewardship and investment; as a result, your support for our work is more important than ever.
If you have been a supporter, we look forward to our continuing relationship. If you are new to LegacyWorks, we hope you will join us on the journey!
2022 Wildfire Resilience Portfolio
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.
