Forestry: forest carbon and resilience goals.

Existing law requires the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to implement various fire protection programs intended to protect forest resources and prevent uncontrolled wildfires. This bill would establish state goals for fuels treatment, vegetation management, and wildfire risk reduction, including, but not limited to, increasing vegetation management on nonfederal lands and urging the federal government to increase vegetation management on federal lands, as provided, and increasing the pace and scale of home hardening efforts to harden at least 100,000 existing homes per year by 2025. The bill would require that the established vegetation management goals be for activities that improve fire resiliency and reduce fire spread, duration, and intensity, fuel ignitability, or ignition of tree crowns, as applicable, and would require the state to implement, or cause to be implemented, the established vegetation management and home hardening goals in a specified manner, including prioritizing the implementation of these goals in the most vulnerable communities. The bill would require the Natural Resources Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency, on or before January 1, 2023, and annually thereafter, to submit to the appropriate policy and budget committees of the Legislature a report on the progress made towards achieving those state goals.