Santa Barbara County Regional Priority Plan for Wildfire Resilience

The Cachuma Resource Conservation District (CRCD) in partnership with LegacyWorks, the Community Environmental Council, Conservation Biology Institute and McGinnis Environmental conducted a planning, mapping and assessment phase for a Regional Priority Plan (RPP) to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest and habitat health on public and private land in the urban/wildland interfaces. The goal of the RPP is to help build climate resilience and protection against wildland fires for both human and natural environments in Santa Barbara County using a science-based mapping and data aggregation platform to identify regional priorities and implementation strategies. 

Our project team gathered input from community leaders and wildfire experts, and applied for and received funding from the California Coastal Conservancy to create the Plan. Through a year-long community engagement process, the team identified 50 priority projects representing the distilled wisdom of dozens of community leaders. Rob Hazard, Fire Marshall for Santa Barbara County Fire Department and close RPP collaborator, said: “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.” Rather than create a static pdf report, the plan is live, interactive and web-based and can be viewed at: www.sbcwildfireresilience.org.