California Headwaters Partnership

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Background

In 2015, the California Headwaters Partnership (CHP) was one of seven regions in the United States named as a Resilient Lands and Waters region, as called for in the President’s Priority Agenda for Enhancing the Climate Resilience of America’s Natural Resources. The U.S. Forest Service and California Natural Resources Agency (via the Sierra Nevada Conservancy) are leading this effort together to:

Identify and map priority areas for conservation, restoration, or other investments,
Build resilience and enhance carbon storage capacity, and
Develop landscape-scale strategies to assist in planning and management activities

The CHP was the only region announced that is co-led by a state and federal agency, speaking to the collaborative nature of the work in the California Headwaters region. The process used to identify and quantify forest and watershed restoration will be organized through the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program, with the goal of making California’s forests and watersheds more resilient to wildfire, climate change, and invasive species.

The Resilient Lands and Waters Initiative will put a national spotlight on existing collaborative efforts and demonstrate that by organizing at a landscape scale, Federal, state, tribal, and local partners are able to improve their ability to plan for the future and address climate impacts across jurisdictional boundaries. By tracking successes and lessons learned from these efforts, this initiative is expected to encourage the development of similar resilience efforts in other areas.

Webinar on the Resilient Lands and Waters Initiative—California Headwaters Partnership

A recording of the April 2016 webinar is now available for viewing.

Taking a Partnership Approach Across All Lands

Both of the documents listed below offer the same information published in November 2016 regarding the main challenges, lessons learned, best practices, and next steps:

Also see: Working Together to Restore California’s Forests and Watersheds