California\u2019s last working nuclear power plant sits cradled in a landscape that would worry any firefighter when the wind picks up.<\/p>\n
The Pacific Ocean and its perpetual fog lick the western edge of the coastal bluffs holding the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. But the Irish Hills rise steeply to its east \u2014 their slopes rugged, dark with scrub and oak. Difficult to access, and full of fuel.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny fire within the Diablo power plant area could be catastrophic,\u201d said Dave Erickson, a division chief and forester with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection\u2019s San Luis Obispo unit. The property, he said, is in a very high fire severity zone. \u201cSo we just take precautions.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the many places where California is now stepping into federal gaps created by Congress\u2019 long-term underinvestment<\/a> in fuels management on federal lands, the Trump administration\u2019s cuts<\/a>, and firefighters stretched thin by blazes raging across the West.<\/p>\n A local organization with state funding, the San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council, started carving a fuel break into the surrounding ridgelines. And Erickson put his crews to work closing the gaps, to create a critical toehold for firefighters to get ahead of flames.<\/p>\n In the past, the patchwork of landowners around the power plant \u2014 which includes the U.S. Bureau of Land Management \u2014 could have derailed Erickson\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n But a 2023 agreement<\/a> Cal Fire signed with the bureau enabled Erickson to use state resources on federal land to complete the fuel break earlier this year. The bureau managed key environmental surveys, planning and approvals. <\/p>\n \u201cThe project was designed from the beginning as an interagency effort,\u201d said Philip Oviatt, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management California in an email to CalMatters. \u201cNo single agency could have achieved this outcome independently.\u201d<\/p>\n The stakes are high for California, where wildfires have burned through millions of acres<\/a> in the last decade \u2014 killing more than 220 people<\/a>, hastening the deaths of tens of thousands more<\/a>, and racking up tens to hundreds of billions<\/a> of dollars in damage.<\/p>\n But the costs are high, too. California has spent nearly half a billion dollars in grants for wildfire resilience and forest health projects on federal lands since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office, according to the California Natural Resources Agency.<\/p>\n Jonathan Fitch, manager of Cal Fire\u2019s vegetation management program, spearheaded three new agreements Cal Fire reached last year with the U.S. Forest Service. The deals allow California to clear fuels, collect cones for seed banks, replant burned lands, manage timber and more on California\u2019s national forests, according to Fitch.<\/p>\n The Forest Service kicked in $4 million for the agreements across the state, some of which will go toward fuels-reduction projects, Fitch said. But the overall need far exceeds the federal funds.<\/p>\n \u201cThe true value is unlocking the state\u2019s potential and resources on the federal landscape,\u201d Fitch said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy response is, well, wildfires don\u2019t stop at boundaries,\u201d Fitch said. \u201cWe cannot disregard what happens in the federal space, because we\u2019re one state. We\u2019re one landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018A finite number of firefighters\u2019<\/p>\n Ever since President Trump accused California of failing to adequately rake its forests \u2014 more than half of which the federal government manages \u2014 Sacramento and Washington have been feuding over fuels management and federal funds.<\/p>\n Gov. Gavin Newsom taunted Trump with a \u201cMake America Rake Again\u201d<\/a> model executive order last year, and blasted him for withholding roughly $1.5 billion in federal aid<\/a> following the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025.<\/p>\n But for all the fighting, California frequently crosses federal borders to manage land and fire.<\/p>\n As the Timber fire kicked off in Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur<\/a> \u2014 burning nearly 6,000 acres<\/a> of rugged terrain and forcing the closure of Highway 1<\/a> \u2014 federal incident management teams were busy.<\/p>\n Some were on other fires,<\/a> in Hoopa and the Pacific Northwest. Others were taking mandatory rest, according to U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we were going to be looking at ordering a team from across the country, and even those are few and far between,\u201d Freeman said.<\/p>\n Instead, the federal agency called in a Cal Fire Incident Management Team to orchestrate the fire response and manage logistics, food, planning, finances, repairs, showers and medical care.<\/p>\n Freeman, Cal Fire and others say that the federal drawdown of incident management teams reflects surging wildfire activity across the West.<\/p>\n But Bobbie Scopa, retired firefighter and vice president of the organization Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said that the Trump administration\u2019s cuts to the Forest Service have exacerbated long-term staffing problems.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWhen we DOGED everybody, we lost people from the teams,\u201d Scopa said \u2014 referring to Elon Musk\u2019s ill-fated government efficiency program. \u201cWe\u2019ve been having a hard time staffing the teams for the last 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Freeman said the decision to have Cal Fire coordinate the Timber fire helped keep federal resources free to deploy to other places they were needed.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not the first time we\u2019ve done this, but it\u2019s something fairly unique to California,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cThere are a finite number of firefighters, but California is in a better position than some states \u2014 than most states \u2014 because of this relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal blind spot<\/p>\n In other areas, it\u2019s harder for California to fill federal gaps.<\/p>\n As the Trump administration\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency slashed federal agencies,<\/a> the Forest Service lost at least 20% of its staff last year, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.<\/a><\/p>\n The administration\u2019s reorganization<\/a> and proposed closures<\/a> to research facilities have destabilized the agency and gutted morale. Key California scientists left after Trump took office, two former U.S. Forest Service employees told CalMatters.<\/p>\n Alan Talhelm, assistant deputy director for climate and energy at Cal Fire, said federal staff losses and job changes have gutted the personnel and expertise that he and his colleagues need to incorporate federal data into the Governor\u2019s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force\u2019s fuels treatment dashboard.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThose data still exist \u2026 But we have nobody to help us interpret those data,\u201d Talhelm said. \u201cIf we see something that looks unusual, it\u2019s harder for us to verify that it is what it should be and that it\u2019s accurate information.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service said that because the agency tracks fuels treatment differently, it\u2019s \u201cchallenging to consolidate our data with our state and local agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n The data, which lag by a couple of years, are important for tracking California\u2019s progress toward state and federal fuel management targets.<\/p>\n The dashboard provides a bird\u2019s-eye view<\/a> of who is thinning or burning fuels, and where. It\u2019s critical information for state agencies targeting grant dollars and staff towards reducing fire risk \u2014 and can help plan where to send firefighters to take a stand against a blaze, Talhelm said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can look at this database and say, \u2018Oh, there was a prescribed burn here. Oh, there was a fuel break here,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a consequence right there. If we don\u2019t have the correct information, it makes the data less useful.\u201d<\/p>\n Talhelm said federal cuts are also slowing the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s portion of surveys needed to update the Forest Inventory and Analysis<\/a> \u2014 a census of the nation\u2019s forests. <\/p>\n The data help scientists and land managers understand how climate change, drought, fire, disease and pests are changing forests \u2014 and what that means for fuels, fire risk and even timber in California.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s literally the foundational information that then goes into everything from where you site your mills, to what carbon is doing, to the benefits of wildfire mitigations,\u201d said John Battles,<\/a> a professor of forest ecology at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n But the data rollout is slow: California ties with Alaska for surveys that date back as far as 2021.<\/a><\/p>\n Cal Fire has tried to increase the pace \u2014 sending out contractors to survey California\u2019s forests. The federal government, according to Talhelm, isn\u2019t keeping up.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not there yet. And we\u2019re not there in part because of the reduction in Forest Service staffing,\u201d Talhelm said. \u201cI don\u2019t know that they have scaled back their ambition, but they\u2019ve scaled back their ability to implement that mission.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Forest Service said the agency is doing a final review of forest inventory data collected from 2022 through 2024, and plans to release it publicly within the next few weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe share CAL FIRE\u2019s interest in seeing more plots measured and more frequent update(s),\u201d the spokesperson said in an email, adding that several unspecified factors pushed California\u2019s review cycle to seven years, rather than the hoped-for five.<\/p>\n The pace is a problem, Battles said: \u201cThink about how many fires there have been since 2021 that don\u2019t show up yet in the dataset,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always a lag in the data, because it takes awhile. But now it\u2019s just getting to be five years \u2026 You\u2019re making decisions with wrong, not up-to-date information.\u201d<\/p>\n Funding the fight against fire<\/p>\n California has been able to fill federal gaps because of its outsize spending on fire, which has skyrocketed to reach roughly $4 billion a year.<\/a> But the money devoted to forest health and fuels management has always made up a relatively small<\/a> proportion \u2014 and now, it\u2019s in trouble.<\/a><\/p>\n The Newsom administration\u2019s changes to a key climate program have already gutted a critical pot<\/a> of polluters\u2019 money that historically funded up to $200 million a year for wildfire resilience projects. <\/a><\/p>\n That number is rapidly dropping \u2014 down to $38 million, according to the Department of Finance\u2019s latest numbers, which won\u2019t be final until next year. The Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office reported this spring that the Newsom administration\u2019s climate overhaul risks zeroing out the money completely.<\/a><\/p>\n This pot of money has funded many of the grants Cal Fire has awarded for work on federal lands, Talhelm said.<\/p>\n On a July morning, Fitch trekked to the ridgeline to see, for the first time, the fuel break that his work on state and federal land agreements enabled. The sun beat back the remaining tendrils of fog tangling with coyote brush and scrub to either side of the fuel break.<\/p>\n Fitch called it a testament to strong partnerships.<\/p>\n \u201cLand is fragmented,\u201d he said, the fuel break stretching along the ridge behind him. \u201cFor Cal Fire to be successful, we can\u2019t do it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n