Placer County approves French Meadows forest thinning

3,000 acres targeted for fire risk reduction project

AUBURN, Calif. – Prioritizing forest health heading into fire season, the Placer County Board of Supervisors voted to execute forest thinning for an additional 3,000 acres of the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project this year.

The French Meadows Forest Restoration Project is a collaborative forest health project intended to reduce wildfire risk and protect the county’s water supply. Covering 22,000 acres of public land around French Meadows Reservoir west of Lake Tahoe, this public-private partnership serves as a model for increasing the pace and scale of ecologically-based forest management and fuels reduction throughout the Sierra Nevada.

The project area provides water supply to thousands of people and businesses, as well as power generation, recreation and high-value natural habitats. The protection of high-quality and reliable water supply, as well as these other beneficial uses of the watershed, are the project’s goals.

The project has been awarded a grant from the Nature Conservancy worth approximately $1.6 million to fund this year’s work. The grant money comes from private sources and CAL FIRE grant funding.

Work on this project started in 2019 and is scheduled to go through November this year.