SACRAMENTO – California unveiled newly updated, first-of-their-kind dashboards that will help Californians track the state’s wildfire prevention work. Along with these new tools, state officials announced that 700,000 acres of land were treated for wildfire resilience in 2023, and that prescribed fire more than doubled between 2021 and 2023. For the first time, all fuels management projects are being tracked in one place, on one map, delivering valuable information for project planning and wildfire response. The updated Interagency Treatment Dashboard, led by the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, now covers data from 2021 to 2023, showing the acres of completed wildfire resilience (or “treatments”) work. …CAL FIRE also launched the Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard, which tracks how wildfire prevention projects have helped shield communities and landscapes from wildfires.

Americans visit hiking and camping areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service more than 150 million times each year. …Due to a looming budget cut, the agency will not be hiring seasonal staff for the next fiscal year, leaving thousands of people out of work and putting essential conservation and biodiversity work at risk. …The spending bill that recently passed the U.S House of Representatives gave the agency around half a billion dollars less than it requested, meaning that the Forest Service faces a large budget cut. Most of the other environmental and science-based federal agencies also face large cuts. Meanwhile, the money that the agency received from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s signature climate law, has already been spent. …This decision does not apply to the more than 11,000 temporary firefighting positions that the Forest Service hires every year.

Oregon state officials today released records that shed some light on the abrupt suspension of the second-ranking official at the Oregon Department of Forestry, deputy state forester Mike Shaw. WW first reported in August that the agency had placed Shaw on leave during the height of the largest wildfire season in Oregon history. …On Aug. 6, Shaw’s boss, Cal Mukumoto, the state forester, sent DAS director Berri Leslie an email with the subject line “ODF sensitive issue.” …The alleged misconduct is not specified in Mukumoto’s letter, but other emails that show a series of emails from a former female Department of Forestry diversity, equity and inclusion official expressing frustration that Shaw had excluded her from what the agency calls “leadership team” meetings. …On Oct. 10, The Oregonian reported a story on ODF that appears related.

PHOENIX – Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Dr. Homer Wilkes and Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed a Shared Stewardship Agreement to strengthen collaboration between state and federal land management agencies in the State of Arizona. The State of Arizona and the USDA Forest Service have a long and successful record of collaborating on efforts to improve forest health and resilience. Today’s agreement focuses on federal and state agencies working together to respond to land management challenges and concerns across Arizona forests. Today’s agreement builds on a 2020 Shared Stewardship Memorandum of Understanding, aimed at accelerating the pace and scale of projects like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), and will assist the state and the Forest Service in their continued efforts to address the wildfire crisis in Arizona’s high priority “firesheds ” using funding from the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.