CAFWA Debuts with Advocacy Trip to Washington, D.C.

This week, the California Forest Watershed Alliance (CAFWA), of which RCRC is a founding member, converged upon Washington, D.C. to meet with House and Senate leaders, U.S. Forest Service, and officials from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Interior to advocate for passage of the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (WDFA).  Other members of CAFWA include the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), California Farm Bureau Federation, California Forestry Association (CalForests), and the Nature Conservancy in California.  This endeavor marked CAFWA’s debut advocacy trip.

The focus of the trip was to advocate for both the passage of WDFA in the lame duck session of Congress, and increased funding for a large landscape scale forest management project to improve science knowledge and innovative approaches to meet NEPA requirements.  

CAFWA is a bipartisian, urban-rural coalition created to promote the restoration and improvement of California’s forested watersheds.  CAFWA’s unique partnership of water interests, local governments, agriculture, and the forestry sector unites diverse constituencies to seek new solutions to promote proactive, science-based, and ecologically sound forest management practices that will reduce the risk of destructive mega fires.  A one pager on CAFWA can be accessed here.