Fire-prone California could lose hundreds of millions for wildfire prevention

California could – California’s shift in wildfire funding threatens to sharply reduce money available for vegetation removal—potentially cutting annual budgets from more than $600 million to about $150 million, advocates warn. The change follows a revised cap-and-invest structur

On a state map, the wildfire threat is already mapped in bright red. In the budgets, the threat now has a price tag—one that California officials and wildfire advocates say could be shrinking just as the flames keep growing more expensive.

California has long relied on the strategic removal of dense. flammable vegetation—work designed to blunt fires ignited by lightning or sparked by power lines. But two major funding streams are set to change. and wildfire resiliency advocates say that could reduce the state’s annual budget for vegetation removal by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Late Friday, state officials adopted a new structure for the emissions program known as cap-and-invest. Analysts say the change will likely reduce wildfire mitigation funding by $200 million per year. At the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest budget proposal would allocate the majority of a climate bond approved by voters in 2024—$1.5 billion dedicated to wildfire prevention—within just three years.

The result. according to an estimate from the Wildfire Solutions Coalition. a group of more than 80 organizations representing conservationists. business owners. fire officials and tribal leaders. is stark: California could go from routinely pulling more than $600 million a year from these sources to just $150 million.

Coalition leaders are urging the next governor to treat the funding crunch as immediate rather than political. “We have the scientists. we have the technicians. we have the advocates. ” said Michelle Decker. who is on the coalition’s executive committee and serves as president and CEO of the Inland Empire Community Foundation. “We see this problem. We can get ahead of this problem. It is a revenue issue.”.

The stakes have only grown. The 2025 L.A. fires alone caused an estimated $250 billion in damage and economic loss. Insurance companies have already paid out $22.4 billion.

To reduce the risk of damage to communities and ecosystems. California has used a wide range of tactics: fortifying homes against wildfires. replanting fire-ravaged forests. and thinning out vegetation with prescribed burns. goat grazing and manual thinning with heavy machinery to reduce the intensity of potential fires.

Research has offered reassurance that the work pays off. A recent analysis of 285 fires in the western U.S. found that every dollar spent on landscape projects saved about $3.75 in wildfire damage.

But as cap-and-invest and the climate bond funding ebb, California would have to lean more heavily on Cal Fire, which devotes only a small portion of its budget to mitigation work.

“This is not an issue that can be pushed off to a timeline based solely on politics,” said Steve Frisch, a founding member of the coalition and president of the Sierra Business Council. “Fire happens whether we want it to or not.”

California’s push to fund wildfire mitigation became more explicit after major disasters. After a series of destructive wildfires in Northern California and the 2017 Thomas fire in Southern California. the state legislature began focusing on funding wildfire mitigation. In 2018, lawmakers directed $200 million per year of cap-and-invest funds to wildfire mitigation projects.

Later. after the Woolsey fire in Southern California and the Camp fire in Paradise raged that fall. Trump accused the state of “gross mismanagement” of forest lands and threatened to cut off federal funds unless it was corrected. With a significant budget surplus, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature began earmarking even more funds. leading to a peak of $1.1 billion in wildfire mitigation investments during the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

When the surplus dwindled, lawmakers in 2024 put a $10-billion climate bond in front of voters, with $1.5 billion dedicated specifically for wildfire mitigation work.

Newsom has since pointed to this high state funding to call on the federal government to step up its own investments into forest management work. The federal government manages 57% of all forests in the state. Over the last few years, the U.S. Forest Service spent $3.1 billion mitigating wildfire conditions in California. while California spent $4.3 billion. according to the California Forest Resilience and Wildfire Task Force.

Even so. the state has already allocated about $600 million of the climate bond’s wildfire mitigation pot for the 2024-2025 and current fiscal years. Under the latest budget proposal, California would allocate more than $300 million for this upcoming fiscal year. Many advocates support moving the money quickly, but it also means less for future years.

The financial structure does not end when the vegetation work ends. The state must pay off the $10 billion bond with interest. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the result is an estimated price tag of $16 billion, paid in roughly $400 million increments every year for 40 years.

For cap-and-invest, the policy path has also narrowed. A months-long debate at the California Air Resources Board over how to extend the program beyond 2030 ended in a compromise that will cut the revenue the program generates in half, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

And because other projects get priority—among them $1 billion every year for California’s high-speed rail project—the new proposal would “likely leave no funding” for the wildfire and forest resilience line item, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found.

Cal Fire. for its part. still holds a modest annual budget for wildfire mitigation work that is not directly tied to cap-and-invest or the bond. In the 2024-2025 fiscal year. the agency had $500 million for forest management and fire prevention that was not directly tied to cap-and-invest or the bond—up from about $65 million two decades prior.

The federal picture is more complicated. Independent analyses by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and NPR found that Forest Service wildfire mitigation work is on the decline amid federal staffing cuts. The Forest Service says the decrease was primarily due to poor weather conditions for activities like prescribed burns and because staff were occupied with firefighting.

While state and federal spending is large. it still pales against what California’s investor-owned utilities are planning to spend to prevent equipment-sparked fires. In 2025 alone. the utilities planned to spend more than $9.2 billion on preventing their equipment from sparking the next devastating wildfire. primarily funded by Californians’ electricity bills.

The question now for California’s leaders is how to keep the landscape work steady when the money streams that helped drive recent surges are set to shrink—potentially leaving fewer resources for the moment when vegetation removal can make the biggest difference.

California wildfire prevention cap-and-invest climate bond 2024 wildfire mitigation funding Cal Fire prescribed burns vegetation removal Wildfire Solutions Coalition Legislative Analyst’s Office wildfire resilience