Accelerating Restoration Through Streamlined Permitting
California hosts some of the world’s most iconic landscapes and highest diversity of plants and animals. Yet these places are under threat from climate, development, invasive species and more. To keep California’s lands and waters healthy now and into the future, the pace and scale of restoration needs to increase.
In response—and in tandem with Executive Order N-82-20 and California’s 30x30 commitments—in 2019, CNRA and partners launched Cutting Green Tape (CGT). CGT accelerates ecological restoration, conservation, and stewardship by advancing permitting and funding efficiencies across agencies, regulations, policies, and practices. The commitment is to maintain California’s strong environmental standards while increasing efficiency and reducing costs.
Check out the Transforming Environmental Restoration: Progress on the Cutting Green Tape Initiative to learn more!
Featured Webinars and Trainings
These webinars spotlight cutting-edge regulatory tools that are reshaping how quickly and boldly we can restore habitats. Discover how these innovations are supercharging the pace and scale of environmental restoration projects helping to achieve the state’s biodiversity and climate goals.
The Race to Restore Nature: Cutting the Green Tape for California's Environment
Cutting Green Tape Regulatory Strategies to Advance Restoration: CEQA Pathways
Regulatory Strategies to Advance Restoration: Multi-Benefit Permitting
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Clearing the Path for Giants: How Cutting Green Tape Helped Redwoods Rise Again
Clearing the Path for Giants: How Cutting Green Tape Helped Redwoods Rise Again In the towering landscapes of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, Redwoods Rising unites Save the Redwoods League, California State Parks, and the National Park Service to restore thousands of acres of young, degraded forest into the signature redwood ecosystems that once defined California’s North Coast.
In the past, overlapping permits, duplicative reviews, and long approval timelines would have slowed this landscape scale effort. However, by using the Cutting the Green Tape Restoration Management Permit, restoration work across more than 12,000 acres has been accelerated—cutting permit timelines from years to months, lowering costs, and channeling resources directly into on-the-ground recovery rather than paperwork.
The result? Healthier forests, faster progress, and a model for how smart permitting can help California restore one of its most iconic ecosystems at the pace the climate crisis demands.
