If you look at the California state budget from last year, you can see that Gov. Gavin Newsom cut more than $100 million in funding for wildfire and forest protection.
It was signed in June and covers the fiscal year 2024–25. A report from Newsweek says that the budget took $101 million away from seven “wildfire and forest resilience” projects.
There are still no controls on the California fires that have destroyed more than 10,000 homes in the Los Angeles area.
The report said that Cal Fire cut its spending on fuel reduction teams by $5 million. This included money that was used to pay the California National Guard for work managing plants.
Other changes:
Several state conservancies that make communities more resistant to wildfires lost $28 million.
$12 million was taken away from an experiment in “home hardening” that would have kept houses safe from wildfires.
Monitoring and study funds were cut by $8 million, with most of the money going to Cal Fire and state universities.
The forest legacy program, which helps landowners take care of their lands, lost $4 million.
An interagency forest data hub lost $3 million in funds
To Fox News Digital on Friday night, Izzy Gardon, who is Newsom’s head of communications, said that the budget cuts were a “ridiculous lie.”
“The governor has doubled the size of our firefighting army, built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet and the state has increased the forest management ten-fold since he took office,” she said. “Facts matter.”
Instead of talking about the most recent cuts, his office sent along numbers that show how spending and staff have grown overall over a number of years since he took office in 2019.
As of 8 p.m. Friday, Cal Fire had not yet replied to a request for comment.
Leave a Comment