SYRCL Awarded $156,000 in Grant Funding from the Sierra Meadows Partnership Block Grant 

SYRCL received $156,000 in grant funding from the Sierra Meadows Partnership Block Grant to advance meadow restoration in the North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project footprint.  

This project will advance meadow restoration on the North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project (NYLRP) through meadow assessment and prioritization of at least 1,750 acres of meadow habitat, resulting in a pipeline of 500 acres of high priority meadow habitat selected for restoration planning. The project will develop a series of meadow restoration projects using the Lost Meadows Model, the University of California Meadows Layer, American River’s Meadow Assessment Scorecards, the Sierra Meadow Prioritization Tool, and active stakeholder input to identify high priority meadows within the North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project that, once restored, would serve as:

• wetted fire breaks
• habitat for sensitive species
• sequester soil carbon  
• provide downstream watershed health benefits

The NYLRP is a USFS Priority Landscape managed by the Tahoe National Forest (TNF) and the North Yuba Forest Partnership (NYFP), of whom SYRCL is a founding member. Improving watershed resilience is a primary goal of the NYLRP. The NYFP recognizes that restoration of sensitive aquatic habitats such as meadow, fen, and aspen are a key part of achieving forest health and watershed resilience, and that an initial assessment and prioritization of meadows on the landscape is needed to achieve a meadow restoration project pipeline that will keep up with the pace and scale of upland work in the NYLRP. Without a project pipeline, opportunities to maximize and combine efforts with upland work in the NYLRP would be unidentified, and, therefore, missed. Having a queue of high priority projects will ensure that projects are expedited, acres are treated, and ecosystems are restored. 

The Sierra Meadows Partnership Block Grant is being administered by Point Blue Conservation Science with funding provided by the Wildlife Conservation Board. SYRCL is excited for the opportunity to pursue this important work and thanks the Sierra Meadows Partnership, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and Point Blue Conservation Science for their generous support.