Butte Creek – Buck Mountain Project CalVTP PEIR PSA & Addendum
The Butte Creek – Buck Mountain Project is intended to implement treatments to improve forest health, diversity, and resilience to safeguard rural communities and landscapes. Over the past two decades, communities across California have become increasingly affected by wildfire. Factors leading to these conditions include the bannning of cultural burning since the late 1800s, fire exclusion over the last 150 years, historic logging practices, a lack of vegetation management, climate change, successive periods of drought, and substantial development in the Wildland-Urban Interface. The Butte Creek – Buck Mountain Project will focus on private forestlands and public rights of ways in eastern Humboldt County to complement fuels reduction efforts on adjacent public lands; reduce critical fire hazards along essential community roadways, PG&E powerlines, and adjacent public lands; reduce surface fuels and ladder fuels across the project area; and retain a resilient and structurally-complex forest that sequesters carbon, promotes biodiversity, and serves important habitat and watershed functions.
The California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP) Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) adopted by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (Board) evaluates the potential environmental effects of implementing qualifying vegetation treatments that reduce the risk of wildfire throughout the State Responsibility Area and adjacent portions of the Local Responsibility Area in California. It was designed for use by many State, special district, and local agencies to accelerate vegetation treatment project approvals by finding them to be within the scope of the PEIR. This finding that the proposed treatments are within the scope of the PEIR must be supported by a Project Specific Analysis (PSA). An Addendum to the Program EIR is another tool designed to address those project components that are not within the scope of the Program EIR but have similar environmental effects.
The Butte Creek – Buck Mountain Project CalVTP PEIR PSA & Addendum proposes to treat up to 6,414 acres. The proposed treatment types and treatment activities are consistent with those analyzed in the certified California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP) Program EIR. Treatment types that would be implemented in the project area are Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), Shaded Fuel Break, and Ecological Restoration; the proposed treatment activities to be used to implement these treatment types are mechanical treatment, manual treatment, and prescribed fire, and targeted herbicide treatment.
HCRCD has completed environmental review of the proposal in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and Guidelines (CEQA), and consistent with the CalVTP. At the Regular Board Meeting of June 11, 2026, the HCRCD Board of Directors may act to establish a partnership with project proponent Cottrell Ranch, LLC, certify that the PSA and Addendum to the California Vegetation Treatment Program Environmental Impact Report comply with CEQA and State CEQA Guidelines, and adopt the CEQA Findings and Statement of Overriding Considerations for Project-Specific Analysis and Addendum for the Butte Creek – Buck Mountain Project.
Documents
Butte Creek – Buck Mountain Project CalVTP PEIR PSA & Addendum