Group Honored For Improving Forest Health
A Mother Lode group is being honored by the U.S. Forest Service. The Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group (ACCG) has received the Regional Forester’s Award for “All Land Ecological Restoration.”
The group is a community based organization that works to create fire -safe communities, healthy forests and sustainable local economies. Their efforts have focused on reducing hazardous fuels in the Mokelumne River Watershed, a common boundary shared between the Stanislaus and El Dorado National Forests.
The award, presented by Regional Forester Randy Moore, recognizes the group’s success in securing grants and facilitating projects. ACCG has facilitated the hiring and training of a hand crew made up of Me-Wuk tribal members, as well as a non-native crew. Both crews have been working to implement a Community Wildfire Protection Plan for Glencoe, and doing fuel reduction projects on BLM and private lands.
The effort began nearly two years ago, when Calaveras County Supervisor Steve Wilensky gathered together a group of public agencies, private landowners, Me-Wuk tribal representatives, environmental groups, small business owners and interested citizens. The idea was to develop mutually beneficial solutions to problems of extreme fire danger, overgrown forests, threatened water quality and high unemployment.
