On Tuesday, Placer County Supervisor Jennifer Montgomery was appointed as the new leader of the Governor’s Forest Management Task Force (FMTF), taking over for Sierra Nevada Conservancy Board Chair Terrence O’Brien.  Montgomery, who served as District 5 Supervisor in Placer County for more than ten years, stepped down as Supervisor upon acceptance of her new position and will assume leadership of the FMTF immediately.

The Forest Management Task Force, of which RCRC is a member, was converted in June 2018 from the Governor’s Tree Mortality Task Force (TMTF), a statewide group formed in 2015 to confront the massive bark beetle epidemic killing more than 140 million trees in the Central and Southern Sierras.  While the focused efforts of the TMTF resulted in targeted tree removal projects in the most impacted counties, conversion of the group to a larger statewide, forest health emphasis left many counties feeling that the new FMTF lacked a clear set of goals and targets, particularly for local government involvement.  Montgomery’s experience as a local elected official in a rural, heavily forested district will help bring focus to the group’s efforts as we continue to seek solutions to California’s forest health and wildfire problems.