The Yuba Water Agency developed the Watershed Resilience Program in 2018 to address the increasing risk of catastrophic wildfires to our mission and communities. This presentation will explain in detail why and how Yuba Water is taking on this challenge and the great progress we have made to date with our collaborators and partners.
Workshop Details
- Title: Working Together for Watershed Resilience
- Presenter: JoAnna Lessard
- Date: September 29, 2024
- Location: TBD
About JoAnna Lessard
Yuba Water’s watershed manager, JoAnna Lessard, leads the agency’s Watershed Resilience Program and the Integrated Regional Water Management Program and supports other large projects across the agency. Through these roles, she works to develop collaborative projects to increase the pace, scale and multiple benefits of forest health and wildfire risk reduction projects, as well as collaborative water supply development and water conservation projects. She represents Yuba Water Agency within the North Yuba Forest Partnership, a flagship forest health and watershed restoration effort, working to plan and implement key treatments across the entire 275,000 acre North Yuba River watershed. Dr. Lessard also manages the 5,400-acre Yuba Foothills Healthy Forest Cal Fire Grant that is funding needed forest thinning on public and private lands in the Yuba County foothills. She brings a broad background in technical natural resource research and management, funding strategy development and project coordination to these and other key agency programs.
