When Alecia Weisman drove through a severe burn scar left by California’s Dixie Fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres in 2021, the scale of the destruction was difficult to comprehend.’Every single tree is dead,’ said Weisman, Watershed Science Director at the South Yuba River Citizens League. ‘It’s total forest loss.’ Without the resources to restore landscapes after major fires, she said, there is a risk that some forests will never fully recover.Historically, low-intensity fire was common in North American forests, ignited either naturally or by Indigenous People to manage lands. Such fire — usually carried out during cooler, wetter periods — helped prevent the buildup of dry, flammable vegetation. It also encouraged new growth and maintained healthy landscapes. But those traditions were steadily replaced by a practice of suppressing fire, which has contributed to overgrown forests primed for the kind of severe wildfires seen today. Rising temperatures and prolonged droughts are also adding to the severity.In response, governments and communities have poured money into fighting wildfires and recovering from them. But often overlooked are the benefits of reducing the risk that wildfires become catastrophic in the first place. Doing so is cheaper and far less destructive than dealing with the aftermath.Getting Ahead of WildfiresA decade ago, Blue Forest, a nonprofit conservation finance organization, WRI’s Cities4Forests Initiative, USDA Forest Service and the National Forest Foundation began developing a way to get more money into proactively restoring forest health before disaster strikes. While many organizations benefited from healthier forests and watersheds, there weren’t clear pathways for them to invest in restoration on public lands.The resulting Forest Resilience Bond brings together public agencies, utilities, corporations and other organizations that benefit from forest restoration with investors willing to provide money upfront. That allows work to begin sooner than reimbursement processes often permit. WRI helped quantify the economic case for early projects, while Blue Forest modeled ecosystem benefits and worked with participating organizations to structure the financing.The first Forest Resilience Bond launched in California in 2018. Since then, the model has expanded across the western U.S. Blue Forest reports that Forest Resilience Bond projects have deployed over $50 million to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk across nearly 50,000 acres, helped protect over 170,000 acre-feet of water supplies that feed downstream communities, and supported 600 jobs by directly or indirectly funding them. The model created opportunities for beneficiaries to work together to fund forest restoration at a larger scale, more efficiently and more quickly than traditional funding approaches alone. A decade after the first Forest Resilience Bond was conceived, its impact can be seen in the experiences of communities that benefit from healthier forests through clean water, restoration jobs, and forests that can better withstand fire. Here are three examples of how these benefits are taking shape on the ground, shared by the people experiencing them firsthand.Protecting Water Supplies from Severe Wildfire: North Yuba WatershedNorthern California’s Yuba Water Agency has relied on the North Yuba watershed for decades for clean water. Its officials are keenly aware that a severe wildfire could send ash, sediment and debris into rivers and reservoirs, threatening water quality, utility infrastructure and the communities they serve.’It’s a watershed that we’ve relied on for many, many decades to provide us this clean, beautiful water,’ said JoAnna Lessard, watershed manager at Yuba Water Agency. ‘And now this forest and the state that it’s in puts all of that at risk. We need to do what we can to work with partners to address this.’ The Yuba River. Photo by McKinleigh Lair, Blue Forest. For the agency, investing in forest restoration made good business sense given that the health of forests upstream directly affects the water communities rely on downstream. Healthy forests naturally slow and filter water as it moves through soils and vegetation, helping regulate runoff, reduce erosion and sediment, and maintain clean, reliable water supplies. ‘Our watersheds are a major part of our infrastructure,’ said Willie Whittlesey, Yuba Water’s general manager. ‘They’re not concrete and steel or pipelines, but they’re absolutely part of our infrastructure, and we need to manage them.’In 2018, Yuba Water became a funder of the first Forest Resilience Bond, helping to finance restoration in the Tahoe National Forest. While Yuba Water depends on the health of the watershed, there was no straightforward way for the agency to invest directly in restoration work on federal lands. The Forest Resilience Bond created a mechanism that allowed Yuba Water and other downstream beneficiaries to support forest restoration — what the agency views as a form of natural infrastructure — rather than waiting to respond after a severe fire caused damage. New Bullards Bar Dam and Reservoir illustrates the close connection between forest health and the water infrastructure communities rely on. Photo by Yuba Water Agency. The project brought together organizations that historically operated in separate spheres, including a water agency, a state fire agency, federal land managers, private investors such as CSAA Insurance and Calvert Research and Management, and foundations including Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.For CSAA Insurance, for example, investing in wildfire resilience offered an opportunity to support healthier forests while helping reduce risks facing its customers and communities. Jason Willett of CSAA explained, ‘Investing in healthy forests is good for the state, good for AAA members, and good for us as an insurer with thousands of customers living in areas at risk of wildfires and other disasters. We earn a good return while helping the environment and our customers. It’s a great combination in a single investment.’By the time restoration work was completed in 2023, activities to reduce hazardous fuels, such as thinning overgrown vegetation, had improved forest health and reduced wildfire risk across more than 8,000 acres. The work also helped protect watersheds supplying 27,601 acre-feet of water and supported 72 restoration jobs.Whittlesey recalled driving through the watershed with his wife and dogs in June of 2026 and finding himself admiring the forest before realizing they were in the middle of Yuba I restoration site. ‘I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is Yuba I,’’ he said. ‘‘This is what a forest is supposed to look like.’’ A forest in the Yuba River watershed after trees and vegetation were carefully thinned to give the remaining trees more space to grow and create a healthier, more resilient forest. Photo by McKinleigh Lair, Blue Forest. The first project also helped bring together the agencies, nonprofits and local groups that formed the North Yuba Forest Partnership in 2019, which coordinates restoration across 275,000 acres of public and private land.’The Yuba I Forest Resilience Bond was the spark that got the North Yuba Forest Partnership going,’ Whittlesey said. ‘We had that partnership up and running within two years.’A second, much larger Forest Resilience Bond followed in 2021, financing $25 million of restoration across a 48,000-acre area of the North Yuba watershed, with contributions from Yuba Water Agency, two Fortune 500 companies, private investors, philanthropic foundations and other public partners.Creating More Reliable Work for Forest Restoration Crews: Upper WenatcheeConnor Craig grew up in Washington’s Chelan County and spent nearly a decade working for the USDA Forest Service before starting his own forestry business. His five-person crew thins forests and removes vegetation on public and private lands that can fuel wildfires. Connor Craig, a local forest restoration contractor, during a site visit in the Upper Wenatchee watershed. Photo by McKinleigh Lair, Blue Forest. For Craig, the work has personal meaning. He has watched places where he fished and camped as a child burn beyond recognition. He worries that his own children won’t get to experience those places as he once did. ‘Our hearts are in this,’ he said. ‘We’re not just here to make a buck.’But money for forest restoration often arrives in bursts and work can be choppy.’It seems like we’re always between a week and two months of running out of work, which is a scary place to be,’ he said.The Upper Wenatchee I Forest Resilience Bond, launched in 2024, is helping to create steadier work for small businesses like Craig’s. The project brings together state and local governments, a public utility, private investors and federal land managers to finance aquatic restoration and about 5,200 acres of fuel reduction — the clean-up of excess brush and small trees to stop wildfires from burning too hot or spreading out of control — within a 15,000-acre area of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. The communities around Lake Wenatchee and Plain are among those facing the highest wildfire risk in the Pacific Northwest. Houses over Wenatchee River in Washington. Photo by Neil Hodges/Flickr. By making money available when work needs to happen rather than according to government funding schedules, the Forest Resilience Bond gives contractors more certainty that one job can follow another. ‘Having more work on the horizon definitely feels really good,’ said Craig. The Upper Wenatchee project is the first big Forest Service contract his company has landed.Blue Forest estimates the project will support 34-54 jobs annually over five years. The treatments could reduce by 80% the area that would burn at high intensity, making fires more likely to remain near the ground rather than spread through the tree canopy.Building a Restoration Workforce: Upper MokelumneKenneth ‘Leo’ Cruz had led construction crews but had no professional forestry experience when he joined the Washoe Tribe Conservation Corps in 2023. His uncle, Steven ‘Buck’ Cruz, who helped start the program, told him that jobs were opening up. Within three years, Leo had risen from crew lead to program manager.’It really has changed my life in a good way,’ he said.For Cruz, the work is about more than learning forestry skills. Northern California’s Upper Mokelumne watershed lies within the ancestral homelands of the Miwok and Washoe Nations, and the Corps gives Tribal members an opportunity to work on the land there.’It’s really good for our people to get out there and take care of the ancestral lands that our ancestors have been taking care of forever,’ he said. ‘It gives our crew a sense of being part of something that’s bigger than themselves.’ Leo Cruz stands alongside his uncle, Buck Cruz, on the Eldorado National Forest in northern California. Photo by McKinleigh Lair, Blue Forest. The Corps was established with a grant from the California Conservation Corps and trains young Tribal members through hands-on conservation work. It earns additional money by taking on paid restoration contracts, which Buck Cruz said helps expand what the program can offer. ‘Our goal is to be able to provide the crew with a living wage while they are learning,’ he said. ‘How much the young people develop, it’s one of the most impactful things I’ve experienced to see their confidence grow. It’s amazing how much nature heals.’Such workforces are increasingly important as communities across the West try to restore more forests and shield themselves from wildfires. A study of forestry contractors in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado found that finding skilled workers was their biggest business challenge, with most relying entirely on in-house training because outside programs were unavailable.In October 2025, the Upper Mokelumne I Forest Resilience Bond supported restoration work carried out by the Washoe Tribe Conservation Corps. While representing only a small portion of the Corps’ work, it provides one example of how restoration financing can create paid work for local crews while helping build the workforce needed to tackle much bigger areas.From Individual Projects to Landscape-Scale FinancingThe OrCal Regional Restoration I Forest Resilience Bond, launched in 2025 across Oregon and northern California, covers the largest area yet. Building from the Rogue Valley I FRB rather than arranging financing project by project, the bond provides a pool of capital that the implementation partner can draw on as work is ready to begin, helping smooth cash-flow gaps and keeping trained crews working.For implementation partners such as Lomakatsi Restoration Project, this means that as individual projects are ready, they can be brought into the existing financing structure and access capital without a new bond being arranged each time.Learn more about Lomakatsi Restoration Project’s work in Oregon here.The broader Upper Mokelumne bond brings together water and electric utilities, corporations, public agencies and private investors to help finance restoration across 26,278 acres of Eldorado National Forest. The importance of that work became visible in December 2025, when the Beaver Fire reached an area that had already been treated. Rather than accelerate, the fire shifted to a slow-moving, lower-intensity fire that only burned 15 acres, giving firefighters safer conditions in which to contain it.The Next DecadeTen years after the partnership formed between WRI and Blue Forest, it’s clear that Forest Resilience Bonds can mitigate the risk of severe wildfires and help bring benefits for water, forests and people — even if a catastrophic fire never comes. The model has grown from a single project in California into a broader approach of financing landscape resilience, with 12 Forest Resilience Bond projects launched across watersheds in the Western U.S.The next challenge is scale. Early Forest Resilience Bonds were aimed at individual restoration projects. In 2022, Blue Forest launched the FRB Catalyst Facility, a pooled investment vehicle designed to finance a portfolio of projects rather than one bond at a time. Newer Forest Resilience Bonds are also being structured to make financing available across multiple projects, so money and workers can move as needed. Blue Forest, with support from WRI, is currently developing a new financing facility that could further expand this approach. Forest restoration crews manage a prescribed burn at OrCal as part of ongoing efforts to reduce hazardous fuels and strengthen landscape resilience. Photo by McKinleigh Lair, Blue Forest. The next decade will also focus on bringing this approach to new landscapes and new partners. In the Colorado River Basin, WRI and Blue Forest are working with water utilities, land managers, Tribal Nations and other beneficiaries to explore how conservation finance can accelerate forest and watershed restoration where healthy landscapes are critical to long-term water security for the western U.S.For the people working on these landscapes, the value of that investment is tangible. It means more consistent work for restoration crews, stronger partnerships among organizations that depend on healthy forests and watersheds, and greater capacity to protect the water, infrastructure and ecosystems that people rely on.’The Forest Resilience Bond showed people we could think outside-of-the-box about how restoration is funded,’ said Weisman. ‘It proved we have new sources of funding we hadn’t tapped into before, and that by bringing beneficiaries to the table, we can increase the pace and scale of restoration.’