Funding Sources for Road Decommissioning Projects

Right now, our fish, wildlife, water, and backcountry lands are threatened by more roads than we need or can afford to maintain. Road removal as a means of restoring watersheds began in the early 1980s in northern California's Redwood National Park. Since then, road removal has become a more established component of forest restoration work on public lands. However, one of the biggest hindrances to accomplishing road removal on the ground is a lack of funding. Funding for road decommissioning on Forest Service lands, for example, usually comes from watershed, fisheries and wildlife, or road maintenance funds, all of which are scarce and in high demand.  Alternative funding sources for agencies as well as private landowners and non-profit organizations do exist. The following report, commissioned by Wildlands CPR, researched and compiled by Beth Peluso, and updated by Breeann Johnson, lists and explains many of the funding possibilities for road decommissioning and restoration, on both public and private lands. As you will see, some have a target audience such as a state or tribe, some focus on partnership efforts, and some have a salmon or fisheries emphasis.

There are many other local or state funding sources that are too numerous to list here. Several state agencies, for example, provide funding for watershed and fisheries improvement projects on state or private lands.  It may be useful to contact the department of natural resources, or the department of fish and game/wildlife in your state, to find out what types of funding might be available on a site or project-specific basis. 

The information in this report is updated annually, but contact information and deadlines will no doubt change between updates.  Information in this edition of the report is current as of May 2006.  Whenever possible, websites, personal contacts, and national or regional office contacts have been listed so that users can access the most current information for each program.

Download the Word file on the left.