About

Actively fostering partnership and collaboration to create a more climate resilient and fire adapted Santa Barbara County

The Santa Barbara County Wildfire Resilience Collaborative, housed within Cachuma Resource Conservation District, is a multi-stakeholder collaborative network working to create a more fire adapted community. The collaborative seeks to protect and enhance communities, natural resources, and habitats by building capacity, strengthening and expanding wildfire preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. This includes advancing projects that restore our natural ecosystems that help reduce fire risks.

MISSION

To protect and enhance communities, natural resources and habitats by building capacity, strengthening and expanding wildfire preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.

Roles of the collaborative include:

- Facilitating the formation of project partnerships

- Matching funding opportunities to priority projects that meet their criteria

- Engaging funders to vet potential proposals and improve proposal success rates

- Drafting, iterating, and submitting grant proposals with project partners

- Where needed, providing fiscal sponsorship, grant management, and reporting support

-Encouraging and shaping new project ideas together with partners

Our Work

The Collaborative is housed within the Cachuma Resource Conservation District and has a mission to reduce wildfire risk by identifying, prioritizing, and spinning up resilience building projects for implementation. Our work is primarily focused on cross-boundary plans and projects aimed at deepening partnerships and relationships, reducing fire risks on the landscape and creating fire-adapted communities with an emphasis on community engagement and inclusion. We work with myriad partners in the community to identify and support wildfire risk reduction projects while seeking to build capacity among community members, jurisdictions, and underserved communities. Typically, our projects fall outside the traditional scope of fire prevention entities, and we lay the foundation to move conceptual phase projects into planning and implementation by building support and partnership.  While a set of coordinating partners stewards the network, website and certain collaborative projects, the network or partners as a whole includes all organizations working to create fire resilience in Santa Barbara County. 

The Wildfire Resilience Collaborative works to catalyze project implementation and to enable the resourcing and implementation of collaborative wildfire resilience initiatives. Projects identified by the WRC are included in the Regional Priority Plan (see projects page), to elevate their potential for funding.

Our Values

The Wildfire Resilience Collaborative partners core values include:

  • Inclusivity - to address the resilience needs of all people, places and species

  • Relationships - connections, collaborations and relationships built on trust and reciprocity

  • Holistic approach - commitment to holistic response, planning, and implementation

  • Biodiversity - commitment to protect and increase the resilience of biodiversity through the deep wisdom of those who have come before us

Coordinating Partners

Wildfire Resilience Partners

Funding Partners