10/13/2026
What if one restoration project could address multiple challenges?
That’s one of the ideas behind nature-based solutions. Restoring and protecting natural systems can provide multiple benefits, from building climate resilience and protecting communities to supporting biodiversity and storing carbon.
The French Meadows Forest Restoration Project covers 28,000 acres of public land around French Meadows Reservoir west of Lake Tahoe. This project is conducting 6,000 acres of ecologically based forest thinning and 7,600 acres of prescribed fire.
These treatments strategically reduce tree density, which returns the forest to an ecological condition that can support naturally occurring fire regimes. Lower tree density also supports the growth of larger, older trees which can durably store carbon as they mature.
Reducing wildfire risk also supports biodiversity, regulates local climate, protects watersheds, and prevents soil erosion – all benefits to advancing California’s NBS climate targets.
These efforts in the French Meadows area, spearheaded by the Placer County Water Agency, Tahoe National Forest, SNC, The Nature Conservancy, and others, were some of the first to be launched at a landscape scale in the Sierra-Cascade.
The French Meadows Forest Restoration Project will restore forest health to the upper headwaters of the Middle Fork American River and help protect communities, resources, and vital water infrastructure including the French Meadows Reservoir, which supplies water to Placer County, Folsom Lake, and feeds into the federal Central Valley Project.
