Barriers to Implementaion of California Vegetation Treatment Program Projects

To better defend wild lands within California's state responsibility areas against wildfire, progress toward efficient fuels management is vital. Created in effort to increase pace and scale of forest fuels reduction, the California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP) serves as method to expedite fire fuel reduction, fuel break development, and ecological restoration projects by streamlining environmental regulatory approval. To better assess the progress of fuels management projects across the state, this professional project aims to look at barriers faced by project proponents when using the CalVTP. A questionnaire was emailed to the project proponents behind the 81 unique CalVTP projects in-progress. By separating projects into those conducted by CalFIRE as well as non CalFIRE entities, differing needs could be assessed. It was found that CalFIRE lead projects struggled most with weather constraints, lack of personnel, and ensuring wildlife protection. Non- CalFIRE entities' most prominent barriers were natural disasters, lack or loss of project funding, as well as issues accessing their project site. These results suggest that to increase the pace and scale of CalVTP projects, increases in available project funding as well as CalFIRE personnel would be beneficial.