California Board of Forestry & Fire Protection

The California State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection is extending the nomination end date for the 2025 Francis H. Raymond Award. The annual award is given to the individual, organization, agency or company who has contributed the most to the management of California’s natural resources over the past five years.

On March 27, 2025 the Board of Forestry & Fire Protection approved the State Lands Grazing Packet. This State Lands Grazing Packet includes a Guidebook which addresses a variety of factors and assists land managers and grazing operators in developing the Grazing Agreement and a comprehensive Management Action Plan (MAP) that will help land managers achieve local environmental goals and objectives, ensure a sustainable grazing operation, and support a mutually beneficial relationship. The Guidebook explains terminology and practical concerns, and includes detailed discussion of sources, goals, and useful components of a Grazing Agreement and MAP. For more information on livestock and grazing management, see the new Livestock Grazing Management Resources webpage.

The Range Management Advisory Committee (RMAC) was statutorily created by Section 741 of the Public Resources Code of the State of California to advise the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Resources Agency, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture on rangeland resource issues. The RMAC Strategic Plan, which is updated on a 5-year cycle, was revised in 2025. Read the RMAC Strategic Plan HERE. The RMAC 2024 Annual Report and Workplan, which details the activities of the RMAC in 2024 and lays out the 2025 Annual Priorities, is available HERE.

The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (Board) is seeking nominations for one (1) vacancy on the Range Management Advisory Committee (RMAC).

See the Call for Applications for further information.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection seeks to fill up to six (6) vacancies on the Effectiveness Monitoring Committee (EMC). See the Call for Applications for more information. Interested parties may send inquiries or a Letter of Interest and current Resume or CV to Kristina.Wolf@bof.ca.gov. See the current membership roster for details about the current membership.

For the latest information on Defensible Space - Zones 0, 1 & 2, click: HERE!

The Effectiveness Monitoring Committee (EMC) revises the Strategic Plan in a 5-year cycle. The Strategic Plan was updated and approved by the Board of Forestry & Fire Protection on March 6, 2025. Read the 2025 Strategic Plan Update HERE.

The Board will hold a hearing at their meeting on March 5 to accept public comments on the proposed 2025 changes to the State Responsibility Area boundaries. Please see https://bof.fire.ca.gov/projects-and-programs/state-responsibility-area-viewer/ for more information.

The EMC revised its Charter in late 2024. Read the updated version HERE.

This report quantifies forest biomass piles accumulated from 2018 – 2021 and provides an inventory of forest biomass pile material potentially available for wood and biomass utilization.  It offers details on the number of forest biomass pile burn permits issued from 2018 - 2021 by CA air district to provide information about open pile burning, prescribed burning, and the total acreage and tonnage of burn piles in CA. Highlights include potentially 150,000 acres of available forest biomass piles, representing approx. 1 million tons of material in piles currently on the landscape, with 78% of it occurring on public lands. Nineteen percent is accessible via existing road networks.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection announces the release of new tools for efficient California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP) implementation and Project-Specific Analysis (PSA) preparation. Find all the information, including links to the updated CalVTP webpage, example PSAs and PSA/Addenda, new FAQs, and implementation tools, here: Information on the CalVTP Resource Library

A goal of the Effectiveness Monitoring Committee (EMC) is to develop a process-based understanding of the effectiveness of the California Forest Practice Rules (FPRs) and other natural resource protection statutes and laws, codes and regulations. To facilitate an Adaptive Management process that informs proposed changes to forestry policy and regulations, the EMC supports research that addresses twelve core research themes. Aligned with these research themes, the EMC has developed a set of Critical Monitoring Questions (CMQ) to guide prospective grantee research questions and help direct EMC funding focus. The research themes and CMQs provided in this document—initially adopted in 2017 and presented in the 2018 Strategic Plan were updated in 2024.