Can California boost wildfire prevention with less cash? A new plan proposes to do just that

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State and federal wildfire officials have spent the past five years rapidly expanding efforts to thin out hundreds of thousands of acres of dense fire-prone forests, reduce the number of human-caused ignitions and fortify millions of homes against flames, heat and embers.On Friday, those officials unveiled a draft plan to ramp up the work and turn a flurry of projects and funding into a long-term strategy — even as the state expects to lose hundreds of millions of dollars from its annual wildfire prevention budget in the coming years and the Trump administration seeks to slash the U.S.Forest Service’s budget.The new plan “is going to enable us to go bigger, smarter, and faster,” said Patrick Wright, director of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, a joint effort between the state and federal government that created the draft plan.

“We’ve built that capacity, we’ve built that science, we’ve built that network....

Now, we’re ready to take everything to the next level.” Climate & Environment Wildfire resiliency advocates warn that reduced funding could leave California more vulnerable to devastation, and are calling on California leaders to act.Under the new framework, officials hope to increase landscape-wide vegetation thinning from about 750,000 acres a year to upward of 1.2 million acres a year, build up “aggressive” ignition-reduction programs and get millions of Californians in compliance with new home landscaping requirements.Right now, the Task Force is playing catch-up.Well over a century of misguided land management and development practices have left the state increasingly vulnerable to frequent and severe fire that risks destroying communities and ecosystems.In California’s forested areas, which historically experienced frequent, low-intensity ground fires, the state and federal government worked aggressively to suppres...