The Eastern Sierra Climate and Communities Resilience Project (ESCCRP) is a collaborative landscape-scale forest restoration project set to reduce the risk of high-severity wildfire and to restore resilience across a 65,000-acre area in the Eastern Sierra. Unlike previous approaches that focused on smaller, disconnected parcels, this project addresses the larger, interconnected nature of the landscape to influence how future fires behave in this region by removal of overabundance of fuels.

Well over a century of anthropogenic influences have reshaped the forests across Sierra Nevada.  Exacerbated further by climate change, our forests are primed for catastrophic change.   This project, being implemented by The Whitebark Institute in collaboration with the Inyo National Forest, aims to intercept the current trajectory of our Eastside forests, and return them to more historic densities, a critical step toward ultimately allowing us to return to using fire as a tool for forest health.  This effort will work to make the forested landscapes we love, more resilient to anticipated future threats from climate change which include, high severity fire, extended drought, mass beetle outbreaks and changes in precipitation timing and amounts. These actions will also work to reduce the risk in the Town of Mammoth Lakes from catastrophic fire events and give emergency firefighting forces tactical options as they continue to encounter increasingly challenging and complex fire scenarios.