A Jan. 18 U.S. Department of Agriculture announcement adds nearly $3 billion more to the country’s forest restoration and fire reduction efforts, particularly on federal forest lands in the heartland of the Washington and D.C. in 10 other western states. Equally important, the accompanying plan incorporates the latest scientific knowledge and reflects Indigenous stewardship practices. The money comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act proposed by the Biden administration and passed by Congress, with potential for further funding the Build Back Better bill, now stalled in the Senate.
Sources in Washington area forest management say the plan complements the state’s current management strategy and recognizes tribal leadership while emphasizing the importance of equitable community engagement.
Darcy Batura, forest partnerships manager at The Nature Conservancy in Washington state, calls the plan “substantial change.”
“Previous plans recognized that we have a big challenge for forest health. But now we have a [specific] plan … and the essential funding to complete the job,” she says.
In 2021, Washington State authorized $125 million to be spent every two years on forest management activities that reduce the amount of flammable materials in forests, restore damaged landscapes, respond to wildfires, and help communities to adapt to the fire conditions of a hotter, drier world. The funding will last eight years for a total of $500 million.
Sources also say it’s not coming too soon for a state in which more than half of the landscape is forested and which has seen more than 7% of its area burned since 2015. Of the 3.1 million homes in the In Washington State, approximately 1 million are threatened by wildfires.
Between fire suppression and climate change, which has led to abnormally dry and drought conditions, wildfires in Washington state are burning more intensely during longer fire seasons.
Hilary Franz, state commissioner of public lands, says federal lands are the most contested and in the worst condition in Washington state.
“Even if my agency … restored all of our state lands and forests to health, and even made significant progress on private lands, we would still see significant catastrophic fires in our state,” she told Crosscut.
“It gives me great confidence that we will begin to make meaningful progress on some of the challenges that we have encountered with the increase in catastrophic wildfires in central Washington, as well as the increase in the death of these forests. “, says Franz.
The next 10 years
The Federal Wildfire Strategy and its funding is injecting nearly $3 billion into wildfire mitigation, forest management and community preparedness in western states over the next 10 years. The government’s wildfire plan promises fire reduction interventions on up to 50 million acres of federal, state, tribal and private lands in areas most vulnerable to fires in central and eastern parts of the country. ‘State. The Forest Service calls these areas “Pools of Fire” and prepares a long-term plan for management and adaptation.
While the United States has spent decades managing landscapes to eliminate fires and allow for damaging logging practices, the new plan adapts new research and Indigenous knowledge on how to manage resilient forests in ways that allow fire in smaller, more regular doses. Forest ecosystems are self-regulating with fire. By not allowing fires to burn in forests where regularly occurring fires support forest ecosystem health, vegetation can build up and fuel catastrophic fires that overwhelm firefighting crews.
In the plan, the Forest Service will reduce the amount of flammable materials in forests by thinning and pruning groups of trees, as well as using controlled burns, which mimic natural fires, which are smaller and less destructive and, to in turn, reduce flammable materials. in the forests. Fire can return nutrients to forest soils, fight off disease and insects, allow light to reach smaller plants and, of course, remove dry, dead plants that could end up fueling fires.
“The 10-year strategy implementation plan has all the right ingredients,” says Batura.
The Forest Service has identified a few key areas to achieve this: using science to determine where and how to reduce fuels and improve forest health, strengthening firefighting and management personnel, centering equity and tribal co-management , building relationships with local agencies and communities, and improving the ability of these local groups to prepare their communities for fires and restore forests that have already burned.
“If we are to have stands of old ponderosa pine or western larch, or blueberry fields, healthy and diverse wildlife habitats and watershed integrity, we need to mimic the processes that created the complex mosaics and fueled by the fire of the past. . This plan promises to increase the rate of work needed to achieve that goal,” says Mark Swanson, fire ecology researcher and associate professor of forestry and landscape ecology at Washington State University School of the Environment.
Swanson appreciates that the Forest Service has several tools to choose from when determining how to make forests more fire resistant. Prescribed fires are not feasible in all forests, and pruning and thinning are not always appropriate options.
