Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Randy Moore announced a strategy to reduce fuels and increase forest health treatments to address wildfire dangers in high-risk firesheds.
The initiative, called “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests,” proposes treating more than 50 million acres of land using $3 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law during 10 years.
“You’re going to have forest fires. The question is, how catastrophic do those fires have to be?” Vilsack told the Associated Press in an interview. “The time to act is now if we want to ultimately over time change the trajectory of these fires.”
Research from USFS identified firesheds as large forested areas with a “high likelihood that ignition could expose homes, communities, infrastructure and natural resources to wildfire.”
Work would begin in the areas of highest risk based on community exposure, including the Pacific Northwest, the Sierra Nevada range in California, the Front Range in Colorado and the Southwest.
Working with other federal agencies, Tribes, states, local communities, private landowners and other partners, USFS will treat 30 million acres on USFS lands over current treatment levels and 20 million acres on other federal, state, Tribal and private lands. Moore said the agency currently treats 2-3 million acres per year.
According to the “Wildfire Crisis Implementation Plan” by USFS, they will launch projects in the first two years that are outcome-driven and designed to reduce wildfire risks to communities, water supplies or critical infrastructure. The project areas will:
• Have critical ecological values (including watersheds, wildlife habitat and old-growth stands).
• Have economic values (including outdoor recreation, timber and grazing areas).
• Be of cultural and historic significance (including areas important to Tribes).
• Be of social importance to communities (including for access and subsistence use).
“We already have the tools, the knowledge and the partnerships in place to begin this work in many of our national forests and grasslands, and now we have funding that will allow us to build on the research and the lessons learned to address this wildfire crisis facing many of our communities,” Moore said in a statement.
More than 7.6 million acres burned in wildfires in 2021, and the announcement noted more than 10 million acres burned in 2020, 2017 and 2015. “The running five-year average number of structures destroyed by wildfires each year rose from 2,873 in 2014 to 12,255 in 2020—a fourfold increase in just six years,” the announcement said.
The National Association of State Foresters (NASF) stated they “stand ready” to work with USFS to target wildfire risk “while leveraging diverse capacities and garnering broad public support.”
“Wildfires in the West may be top of mind, but managing wildfire is truly a national call-to-action that spans all landscapes and every state in this country,” said NASF president and Connecticut State Forester Christopher Martin in a statement. “All of the nation’s state foresters stand ready to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the Forest Service on implementing this national strategy.”
Critics say the government’s plan is just another strategy to increase logging, build roads on USFS lands and hurt fish and wildlife species.
“The U.S. Forest Service simply cannot log its way out of the climate crisis or effectively protect homes and communities from wildfires by dramatically increasing industrial logging of National Forest System lands,” Adam Rissien, rewilding advocate at WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement.
In addition to increasing forest health treatments, USFS has pledged to develop a $1 billion program for community wildfire defense grants, which benefit at-risk communities. — Charles Wallace, WLJ editor
