Washington D.C. – U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, introduced S.4370, the Tribal Forest Protection Act Amendments Act of 2024, to promote greater indigenous stewardship of Federal and Indian forest and rangelands. The 2004 TFPA law was intended to protect Indian forest lands and resources from various threats, including wildfires, by allowing Tribes to enter into agreements with the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management to carry out forest management activities on federal lands that are “bordering or adjacent to” lands under tribal jurisdiction.  In practical terms, the “bordering or adjacent to” requirement has proved too restrictive as it does not adequately capture the sites, features, cultural landscapes, sacred places or objects with cultural value to Native peoples that may be located on federal land that does not border Indian land.