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California: As Trump tears apart decades of environmental progress, Governor Newsom restores nearly 300,000 acres of habitat and cuts average permitting time to 42 days

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Mar 2, 2026

As Trump tears apart decades of environmental progress, Governor Newsom restores nearly 300,000 acres of habitat and cuts average permitting time to 42 days

New report shows four years of historic progress, including 500+ fast-tracked restoration projects, 700 miles of streams improved, and $12 million in permitting savings

What you need to know: The Newsom administration continues to make it faster, easier, and more affordable to launch environmental restoration projects across the state through its Cutting the Green Tape initiative.

Sunol Valley Fish Passage Project

SACRAMENTO – As the Trump administration tears apart decades of environmental progress, Governor Newsom remains committed to streamlining California's efforts to restore and protect its lands, waters, and wildlife.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25 Report to the Legislature on its Cutting the Green Tape initiative, now in its fourth full year. The report shows that over the past four years, the program has helped more than 500 restoration projects move forward by reducing costly delays and making the approval process easier to navigate. To date, these efforts have already helped restore nearly 300,000 acres of habitat, reconnect 5.5 million acres of land, and improve over 700 miles of California streams.

Good environmental work shouldn't get buried in paperwork, and we've proven it doesn't have to. More than 500 restoration projects, nearly 300,000 acres of habitat returned to health, and permits approved in an average of 42 days. Donald Trump is the weakest President in American history on the environment. While he tears apart decades of progress, California will keep restoring and protecting our environment for this generation and every generation that follows.

Governor Gavin Newsom

In FY 2024-25 alone, CDFW funded, permitted, or assisted with environmental review exemptions for 151 projects, resulting in the enhancement of 134,499 acres and 88 stream miles, saving an estimated $4,205,490 compared to traditional environmental permitting. During FY 2024-25, CDFW permit processing times averaged 42 days. Each of these projects delivers direct benefits for fish, wildlife, and clean water for California's communities.

"Progress in cutting green tape happens every day with each project approval, and when we look back over the last year, those efforts clearly add up," said Meghan Hertel, Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Each administrative barrier we remove today makes it faster and easier to recover California's rich biodiversity for the benefit of future generations."

Launched in 2021, the Cutting the Green Tape program creates new pathways to accelerate, scale, and improve the quality of beneficial habitat restoration projects. Instead of forcing good environmental work to get stuck in paperwork, CDFW's efficient restoration permitting and environmental review pathways eliminate unnecessary barriers and help important biodiversity recovery projects get approved more quickly with lower costs. Tools like the Statutory Exemption for Restoration Projects, Restoration Consistency Determination, and the newly authorized Restoration Management Permit have collectively saved restoration projects more than $12 million to date.

To build on this progress, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot and California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Yana Garcia issued a joint memo to department leadership calling on agencies to redouble their efforts to identify and eliminate unnecessary permitting delays. The memo makes clear that the Newsom administration's commitment to cutting green tape is an ongoing promise​ to every Californian.

Restoration in action

Some of the important projects supported by Cutting the Green Tape in FY 2024-25 include the following:

Johnson Cosumnes Mitigation Bank Floodplain Restoration
This project is located on an approximately 218-acre property known as Johnson Ranch in Sacramento County. The project is expected to establish the Johnson Cosumnes Mitigation Bank in order to help restore native fish and support habitat for many common native wildlife and plant species. Project activities include:
  • Protecting 204 acres of wetland, riparian and riverine habitat under a conservation easement
  • Creating approximately 10 notches in the existing agricultural berms
  • Regrading and contouring existing agricultural fields as well as existing deep pockets
  • Planting native wetland and riparian plant species
  • Establishing a post-restoration monitoring and maintenance approach for long-term durability of the project.  

The project is expected to benefit Swainson's hawk, valley elderberry longhorn beetle, giant gartersnake, steelhead, tricolored blackbird, western red bat and western pond turtle.

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Johnson Cosumnes Mitigation Bank Floodplain Restoration Project

Lodge Road Wildlife Resilience and Large Tree Restoration Demonstration Project
This project is located within the Big Basin Redwood State Park, owned and operated by California Department of Parks and Recreation in Santa Cruz County. In 2020, the San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit Lightning Complex Fire impacted Big Basin Redwood State Park and the surrounding landscape. The project will provide multiple environmental and restoration benefits, including habitat improvement, wildfire resilience and improved forest conditions through planned forest density reductions, understory treatments and prescribed burning within four treatment units that have been delineated by vegetative species composition. Once completed, the project is expected to restore approximately 54 acres and will benefit a number of native plant and animal species, including huckleberry, evergreen violet, unsilvered fritillary butterfly and Townsend's big eared bat.

Lodge Road Wildlife Resilience and Large Tree Restoration Demonstration Project

Sunol Valley Fish Passage Project
This project, located along Alameda Creek between the San Antonio Creek confluence and Calaveras Dam in Alameda County, aims to restore fish passage for native fish species by removing existing erosion control matting and relocating a gas pipeline. Activities also include re-grading several hundred feet of Alameda Creek and creating new pools and meanders. The project is expected to enhance more than 20 miles of habitat for migratory fish, including Central California Coast steelhead, Chinook salmon and lamprey species. Shortly after completion on the project in late 2025, Chinook salmon were spotted upstream of the former barrier.

Sunol Valley Fish Passage Project

Trump's war on America's natural resources

While California accelerates habitat restoration and expands protections for biodiversity, the Trump administration has launched an unprecedented assault on America's public lands, wildlife, and natural resources. Trump's record speaks for itself. Here are just a few examples of their harmful environmental actions:
  • Initiated actions to strip protections from tens of millions of acres of public lands.
  • Declared 113 million acres of national forests an "emergency" logging zone, fast-tracking commercial timber extraction while bypassing environmental review and public participation.
  • Rescinded the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, eliminating protections for 58 million acres of national forest lands from road building and logging.
  • Proposed changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act that would make it harder to list and protect imperiled species — potentially leaving the monarch butterfly, Florida manatee, and California spotted owl without protections for years, even after they are formally listed as threatened.
  • Slashed nearly 1,800 positions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—an 18% reduction that includes 530 fewer biologists tracking and protecting endangered species. The Trump administration also fired more than 1,000 National Park Service employees, hampering the federal government's ability to protect wildlife and maintain the nation's most treasured places.
  • Rolled back protections for migratory birds, withdrawing a longstanding legal interpretation that had shielded hundreds of species from being killed by oil and gas operations.

While the Trump administration guts the rules that protect our air, water, and wildlife, California is accelerating restoration projects by cutting the green tape.

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New CDFW Permitting Resource

Cutting the Green Tape staff have also developed a new Guide to Restoration Permitting with Cutting the Green Tape for restoration practitioners looking for simplified guidance on how to develop a strategic plan for streamlining environmental review and CDFW restoration permitting.

Looking Ahead

With Cutting Green Tape firmly established as the new normal, CDFW expects to speed up even more habitat restoration and stewardship efforts across California in the future. These efforts support the broader goal of the state's 30×30 initiative, which aims to conserve 30 percent of California's lands and coastal waters by the year 2030. Learn more about CDFW's Cutting the Green Tape Program and tools for restoration at www.wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Cutting-Green-Tape.

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