Santa Lucia Fuels Reduction Project (Santa Lucia Conservancy)

Over a 4.5-year period, funds are being used to reduce wildfire risk on the Santa Lucia Preserve by treating fine fuels, dense monotypic invasive vegetation, and ladder fuels across grassland and oak savannah.

These actions are creating landscape-scale fire resilience by slowing fire spread, reducing flame height and crown-fire behavior, and improving access for residents and firefighters during an ignition. The work is directly protecting high-risk and very-high-risk wildland–urban interface communities in and around the Carmel River watershed, where more than 11,000 homes, 19,000 residents, critical lifeline utilities, schools, communications towers, and the drinking-water supply system are vulnerable to catastrophic fire.