Steve Wilent

Although the story may have been overshadowed by news of the surge of the omicron variant of Covid 19 and Russia’s positioning of an army just across the border with Ukraine, the US Forest Service, along with its parent agency, the USDA, announced in January a bold plan for “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis” in the US. Subtitle: “A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests.” The press release announcing the strategy… said nearly $3 billion would be available via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. …Now, $3 billion may sound like a lot of money, but consider that the Forest Service alone spent an average of nearly $2 billion per year on fire suppression from 2016 to 2020. 

Focusing on the firesheds where wildfires pose the greatest risk to people, property, and resources is a smart strategy and will make sense to the general public. This clarity will be especially important when anti-forest-management groups raise objections and lawsuits, some of which will likely claim that fuels and forest health treatments are massive industrial logging projects in disguise. …Even if additional funding is forthcoming, will the Forest Service be able to beef up its staff? And to support treatment of up to an additional 30 million acres of lands? And managing the contracts and contractors needed to perform the work? …And find enough buyers for the logs and fuels to be removed? …Aside from questions about funding, staffing, and contracting, the Forest Service’s strategy for confronting the wildfire crisis is a sound one. …Delay, especially through a lack of funding from Congress, will only intensify the crisis.