French Meadows Restoration Project
The French Meadows Restoration Project is overcoming U.S. Forest Service staffing and funding constraints through an innovative partnership-led approach. Project partners include Placer County, Placer County Water Agency, The Nature Conservancy, American River Conservancy, and the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at UC Merced. The partnership worked together to plan, fund, and is now implementing the forest restoration project, accomplishing a faster pace and scale than the U.S. Forest Service could do on its own.
Additionally, project partners are demonstrating how ecologically-based forest thinning increases forest resilience and can reduce risk to our water supply. The results of The Nature Conservancy’s study with partners indicates modest return on investment covering 8.2-15.8% of restoration costs. Learn more via this storymap.
You can also learn about lessons from the French Meadows partnership in this publication: Restoring Forests Through Partnership.
