Fire-resilient forests have a ripple effect — from trees to landscapes to communities — as their benefits spread beyond their borders to all of us.
The 275,000-acre North Yuba Landscape within California’s Tahoe National Forest is one of the largest contiguous unburned areas remaining in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was selected for the Wildfire Crisis Strategy in 2022 as a high-risk landscape.
The North Yuba is also home or backyard for several mountain communities, including Downieville — about 3 square miles with a population of around 250. Like many other small towns within forested lands in the West, Downieville is exposed to significant wildfire risks due to rising temperatures, enduring drought and an overabundance of living and dead trees on the land…