Building Shrubland and Grassland Resilience

What is the Building Fire Resiliency in California’s Coast Range Forest and Grasslands RCPP?

The Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) is a partner-driven approach to conservation that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural or private lands. Yolo County Resource Conservation District and other regional RCDs and partners are apart of the Building Fire Resiliency in California’s Coast Range Forests and Grasslands RCPP.

The Forest and Grasslands Resilience RCPP seeks to:

• Restore historic fuel quantity and structure and reduce extreme wildfire behavior.
• Manage vegetation to lower the intensity of fire and preserve wildlife habitat.
• Maintain forest carbon storage which can be lost during a catastrophic wildfire with massive tree mortality.

Who can participate?

RCPP project funding will be available to eligible agricultural producers and landowners living in the high fire areas of western Yolo County. NRCS will provide financial assistance on a competitive basis for approved conservation practices/activities for the purpose of addressing wildfire resilience in Yolo County. Land producer eligibility, adjusted gross income, and all other program criteria for participation must be met for contract approval.

Staff from Yolo County RCD and NRCS will provide technical assistance to landowners to identify and implement the proper strategies or “conservation practices” that will help improve land stewardship and wildfire resilience. RCD staff will provide guidance, site visits, and monitoring for Yolo County landowners interested in the program.

Yolo County Fire Hazard Severity Zones

Eligible Conservation Practices:

Brush Management (314): the management or removal of woody (nonherbaceous or succulent) plants including those that are invasive and noxious by mechanical, chemical, burning, or biological methods.

Critical Area Planting (342): establishing permanent vegetation on sites that have, or are expected to have, high erosion rates, on sites that have physical, chemical, or biological conditions that prevent the establishment of vegetation with normal seeding/planting methods

Fence (382): a constructed barrier to animals or people.

Fuel Break (383): a strip or block of land on which the vegetation, debris, and detritus have been reduced and/or modified to control or diminish the risk of the spread of fire crossing the strip or block of land.

Firebreak (394): A permanent or temporary strip of bare or vegetated land planned to reduce the spread of wildfire or contain prescribed burns.

Prescribed Burning (338): planned fire applied to a predetermined area to manage invasive weeds to improve plant community structure and composition and/or reduce hazardous fuels to prevent wildfire.

Prescribed Grazing (528): managing the harvest of vegetation with grazing and/or browsing animals with the intent to manage fine fuel loads and/or improve and maintain desired species composition for healthy plant communities.

For a complete list of practices, visit the link above.

For more information: