Utah will get up to $20 million over the next four years to protect communities and watersheds in forest areas from the threat of catastrophic wildfire, Gov. Gary Herbert announced Tuesday. Under Utah’s Shared Stewardship agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, the state will start two large, forest restoration projects intended to head off large unwanted fires in critical areas, Herbert’s office said in a news release. They include the upper Provo River project, located on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, and the Canyons project, located on the Manti-La Sal National Forest. The Canyons project, which is currently undergoing an environmental review, would clear about half the beetle-killed Engelmann spruce on 30,000 acres on central Utah’s Wasatch Plateau. The 171,000-acre project area also includes thinning, prescribed burns and reseeding in an effort to nurse an ailing ecosystem back to health and restore aspen groves that have been displaced by conifers after years of fire suppression and livestock grazing.