Wildfire Resilience Insurance: Quantifying the Risk Reduction of Ecological Forestry with Insurance
This report examines how ecological forestry practices, including prescribed fire and forest thinning, reduce wildfire risk and insurance losses in California. Using the French Meadows project as a case study, the analysis quantifies insurance benefits, premium savings, and opportunities to fund forest restoration through innovative insurance solutions.
Subject Tags
- Climate adaptation
- Fire management
- Forests
Overview
This report explores how ecological forestry can reduce wildfire risk while generating measurable insurance benefits for communities, utilities, landowners, and insurers. Using the French Meadows Project in California's Sierra Nevada as a case study, the analysis evaluates how prescribed burning and strategic forest thinning reduce wildfire severity, expected losses, and insurance costs. Researchers developed innovative indemnity and parametric insurance models to quantify the value of wildfire risk reduction and assess how insurance savings could support future forest restoration investments. The study found that ecological forestry can significantly lower wildfire related losses, reduce residential insurance premiums, improve insurability in wildfire prone areas, and create opportunities to finance additional forest treatments. Results also demonstrate that ecological forestry can help address challenges associated with climate change, increasing wildfire severity, and the growing insurance crisis in California. The report highlights how nature based forest management can enhance community resilience, protect infrastructure, improve watershed health, and support long term wildfire adaptation and risk reduction strategies.
Supporting Documents
TNC Authors
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Dan Porter
Forest Strategy Lead, Climate Program
The Nature Conservancy
Email: dporter@tnc.org -
Dave Jones
The Nature Conservancy -
Sarah Heard
The Nature Conservancy -
Bradley Franklin
The Nature Conservancy -
Edward Smith
The Nature Conservancy