California is facing a significant challenge in restoring millions of acres of forestland severely damaged by wildfires, according to a working draft of the state’s new reforestation strategy. The document, developed with input from state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, and wildfire experts, highlights that 2.3 million acres of California’s forests have burned with such intensity that the affected areas are unlikely to regenerate naturally. Experts warn that without substantial intervention, up to half of California’s forested landscape could disappear by 2071.

Forests play a critical role in the state’s environment by storing carbon, safeguarding water supplies, filtering air, and providing habitat for wildlife. The reforestation strategy emphasizes the urgency of scaling up efforts to replenish these forests and calls for a significant increase in resources, including seed banks, nursery space, and staffing. Cal Fire has estimated that the capacity to collect and grow seeds would need to expand by approximately 300% just to replant a quarter of privately owned forestlands, while federal lands, which make up more than half of California’s forests, present even greater restoration needs.

Despite the growing necessity, funding and staffing constraints have hampered reforestation efforts for years. The U.S. Forest Service, responsible for much of the federal forestland, has seen a significant reduction in personnel, with a nearly 40% decline in non-fire staff for national forest management between 1998 and 2015. This reduction coincided with tightened logging restrictions intended to protect endangered species and public lands, diminishing the timber harvest revenues that historically supported replanting work.

Wildfire frequency and severity have also increased the demand for restoration efforts, further straining these resources. Although recent federal investments, including a reforestation trust fund established in 2021, have boosted the annual number of acres replanted nationwide—reaching about 285,000 acres last year, the highest in over 25 years—the pace remains insufficient. The draft strategy notes that to meet California’s postfire replanting goals starting in 2030, reforestation rates will need to grow by 35% annually, a task estimated to cost up to $6,400 per acre.

On federal lands in California specifically, only about 8% of severely burned acreage has been replanted since 2020, with some studies suggesting the figure could be as low as 1.2% when excluding wilderness areas and naturally regenerating sites. Researchers and forest ecologists highlight this widening gap, attributing it to decades of federal workforce depletion, bureaucratic delays, and the complexity of postfire restoration activities such as clearing dead trees and growing seedlings.

At the state level, Cal Fire manages reforestation initiatives, operating a nursery in Davis and providing grants for restoration on public and private lands. However, funding remains fragmented, reliant on fluctuating state budgets, federal assistance, and one-time grants. The nursery itself was shuttered in the early 2000s due to budget cuts and only fully reopened in 2017 following legislative support. Expanding and upgrading the nursery infrastructure is estimated to require over $26 million, with only modest planning funds allocated so far.

Additional uncertainties stem from recent moves by California’s climate regulators to revise a major climate program that could reduce or eliminate up to $200 million annually earmarked for wildfire resilience, placing reforestation grants among competing priorities. Although the state has access to $1.5 billion from a climate bond for wildfire and forest resilience, these funds are being expended quickly.

Experts caution that California’s challenges reflect a broader problem across the Western United States, where reforestation capacities are generally inadequate relative to the scale of wildfire damage and climate change impacts. “California is probably, infrastructurally speaking, in a better place than any other Western state,” said Hugh Safford, a forest ecologist at UC Davis. “What that tells you is how poor the capacity is in general in the Western U.S., because California is nowhere near prepared for the scale of this.” The state’s draft reforestation strategy underscores the pressing need for coordinated action and significant investment to prevent further loss of forestland in the coming decades.