The Southern California Forests and Watersheds Program supports strategic partnerships to help protect, restore, and sustain the region’s unique environment for targeted landscapes and species important to the region, and local communities.
Partners
Southern California has steep, rugged mountains, long sandy coastlines and remote wilderness. It is a cross-section of many environments – rivers and ocean, forests and grasslands, deserts and coastal shrublands. As one of the world’s most biologically diverse areas, it supports a wide variety of unique and important species such as the California condor, steelhead trout, big cone Douglas-fir, monarch butterflies and humpback whales. All these environments are at the doorstep for more than 18 million people, who influence and are influenced by these landscapes every day.
Wildfire Restoration
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has partnered with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to recover and enhance USFS managed lands affected by wildfire, develop tools and information to guide restoration and management decisions, and build resilience to future fires and drought.
The Southern California Forests and Watersheds Program releases a Request for Proposals annually to solicit projects that utilize the skills, innovation and enthusiasm of diverse partners to help in this effort. Currently, the program administers funding to address past fires on the Los Padres National Forest (Zaca, Piru and Jesusita fires) and Angeles National Forest (Copper, Powerhouse, Ranch and Sayre fires).
These projects aid the USFS by helping to increase the pace and scale of post-fire restoration, provide sustainable and lasting ecological benefits, improve forest health and resilience, and encourage ‘shared-stewardship’ of USFS lands through expanded partnership and cooperation.
Past projects through this program include, but are not limited to:
- Invasive weed treatments and restoration of native chaparral
- Steelhead habitat surveys and population counts
- Trail maintenance and interpretive sign development
- Aquatic organism passage improvement designs
Application Information
| 04/14/2022 | Southern California Forests and Watersheds - Wildfires Restoration 2022 Request for Proposals - CLOSED | View Now |
| 05/24/2022 | California Business Plan | Download the PDF |
| 02/10/2022 | Program Fact Sheet | Download the PDF |
| 10/18/2022 | Southern California 2022 Grant Slate | Download the PDF |
| 02/10/2022 | Southern California 2021 Grant Slate | Download the PDF |
| 04/13/2021 | Southern California 2020 Grant Slate | Download the PDF |
| 04/13/2021 | Southern California 2019 Grant Slate | Download the PDF |
| 04/13/2021 | Angeles National Forest 2017 Grant Slate | View Website |
| 12/03/2019 | Los Padres National Forest Business Plan | Download the PDF |
| 04/13/2021 | Angeles National Forest Fire Restoration Strategy | Download the PDF |
Director, California Forest Programs
Program Coordinator, Western Regional Office
Related Species
California condor
The California condor is the largest land bird in North America. In 1981, there were only 22 individuals remaining, but the species is increasing in numbers after being taken into captivity, bred and released to locations in California, Baja California, and Arizona. However, the California condor still highly threatened and dependent on conservation.
Golden eagle
The golden eagle is a Holarctic species that inhabits open country, in either deserts, tundra, high altitudes or rangelands. Although it is widely distributed in the continental United States, its numbers are generally much greater in western states.
Cougar
The cougar, also known as mountain lion or puma, is a powerful predator that is found in a variety of habitat types from Canada into South America. Cougars are stealthy ambush hunters that can exploit many prey types, although their primary food source is deer. Cougars active patrol large home territories and survive in low densities.
Pollinators
Pollinators are a group of insect, avian and mammalian species that fertilize many flowering plants and agricultural crops by transferring pollen from the male structures (anthers) to the female structures (stigma) during foraging. More than 80 percent of flowering plants on earth need pollinators to produce the next generation, and it is estimated that they add hundreds of billions of dollars to the global economy, highlighting their extreme importance to human food security.
Monarch butterfly
One of North America's most iconic species, the monarch butterfly is best known for it's spectacular 3,000-mile annual migration from their northern breeding grounds to wintering grounds in central Mexico. A distinct, western monarch population migrates between the western states and their winter range in coastal California; both the eastern and western populations have been negatively affected by habitat loss and reduction in milkweed plants that serve as the sole food source for monarch caterpillars.
