August 3, 2024 - SONORA, CALIF. – We are very pleased to announce the first Record of Decision titled "Another Step in Collaboratively Moving Toward Resilience in the Stanislaus Landscape" of the Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape 2.0 project (SERAL 2.0) on the Stanislaus National Forest was signed by Jason Kuiken on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. This project was designed to restore forest resilience and reduce the landscapes susceptibility to negative effects of natural disturbances.
"I am tremendously excited to reach this milestone." said Jason Kuiken, Forest Supervisor Stanislaus National Forest. "In early 2020, we accelerated an ambitious journey to plan the original SERAL project and implement work at a scale not previously achieved in order to dramatically reduce the risk of wildland fire impacting communities, critical infrastructure, habitat, and more. By ‘accelerated’, I mean that we have been working on projects for decades that remain the foundation of how we are approaching resilience – from ongoing local research to decades of prescribed fire knowledge and experience, to crafting projects in a collaborative sense while recognizing that resilience is an “All Lands” issue. The ‘we’ in this includes the entirety of the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) Collaborative and broad public engagement. In the four years since, our ambitions are coming to fruition, due to active collaboration on the implementation of the original SERAL decisions, as well as partners being dedicated to implementing work on surrounding private lands as quickly as possible."
The first SERAL 2.0 decision authorizes, most, but not all of the proposed action presented in the FEIS. The actions not included in the first decision include: (1) forest thinning within California spotted owl protected activity centers (CSO PACs); (2) the use of herbicides for fuelbreak maintenance; and (3) salvage of insect, disease, drought, wildfire, or prescribed fire killed trees. Each of these actions have been deferred to future, separate decisions to afford additional engagement opportunities with our partners. We anticipate these decisions being completed in 2024.
To view the Decision signed this week visit the project website at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=63557
Source: U.S. Forest Service
