On October 8, 2015, the House Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry held a hearing on the 2015 fire season. The California Forest Watershed Alliance (CAFWA), of which RCRC is a founding member, submitted written testimony for the record in line with CAFWA’s perspective on key resources at risk from catastrophic wildfire including water supply, quality, and infrastructure; ecosystems and wildlife; and rural economies. CAFWA called on the House to pass legislation that promotes landscape-scale collaboration, fixing “fire borrowing,” expediting forest restoration projects, addressing the pace of the judicial process, and continuing funding for forest-water research. The full testimony can be accessed here.
CAFWA is an urban-rural coalition representing water interests, local governments, the conservation community, agriculture, and the forestry sector, created to promote the restoration and improvement of California’s forested watersheds. In addition to RCRC, CAFWA includes the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), the California Forestry Association (CalForests/CFA), the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). CAFWA’s Charter can be accessed here.
CAFWA’s principal policy tenets emphasize the importance of healthy forests by highlighting the multiple values that they provide. These tenets include advocating for:
- Increasing funding and create new funding sources for forest management from federal, state, local, and private sources;
- Creating policy and legislative reforms that will promote improvements to and expansion of ecologically sound forest restoration activities; and,
- Advancing monitoring and research to improve the state of scientific knowledge to better direct future land management decisions.
CAFWA intends to pursue these policy goals as Congress crafts changes to forestry policy and fire funding expected to occur in the remainder of this year or early next year.