Sen. Henry Stern, D-Calabasas, applauded the governor’s signing of the $536 million Early Action Wildfire Budget, in a statement released by Stern’s office last week.
As part of that budget, $12 million was earmarked for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy “to manage the (wildfire) risks from public lands on neighboring communities.” Stern helped secure this funding, the release stated.
“We finally succeeded in making the case to the governor and the rest of California that our fire problems in this region are unique — that we must focus on home and community hardening, public land management, and restoring the power of native ecologies in our chaparral by removing invasive grasses,” Stern said in a prepared statement. “While prescribed fire and dead tree clearance may work in the northern redwood forests, that’s not going to prevent the next Woolsey Fire.”
The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and state and local agencies will be included in a survey as part of an outreach effort by Stern’s office to identify “shovel-ready proposals around community hardening, ecologically restorative vegetation management, volunteer training and battery backup power.”
