In response to today’s U.S. Forest Service announcement highlighting new efforts to implement the agency’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, American Forests Vice President of Forest Restoration Brian Kittler released the following statement:
Amid increasingly severe, climate-driven wildfire events, our nation’s forests and communities face new threats to their health and well-being.
Today’s announcement of wildfire risk reduction efforts across 11 western landscapes, a year after the introduction of the U.S. Forest Service’s 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy, directly reflects stakeholder feedback and incorporates new analysis to identify highest-risk areas and prioritize resources to reduce risks to communities, watersheds and critical infrastructure, while taking an equity lens to these investments. Treatments in these landscapes will help our forests maintain long-term resilience to fire and improve stand health through integration of management tactics such as prescribed fire and mechanical fuels reduction.
The Biden-Harris administration continues to demonstrate an unprecedented commitment to addressing these urgent, climate-induced threats through advancing forest health and wildfire risk reduction, harnessing traditional programs such as the USFS Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program and the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership alongside an infusion of new resources for forest restoration included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
The landscapes were selected through a comprehensive mapping of existing wildfire risk, proximity to municipal watersheds that supply drinking water for millions of Americans, nearby infrastructure like high voltage utilities and major transportation corridors, tribal priorities, migration corridors and habitat for wildlife species most impacted by fire and other data layers. The Forest Service incorporated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index into their planning, acknowledging that factors including poverty, lack of access to transportation and crowded housing may weaken a community’s ability to prepare for, address risks, and respond to disaster events.
American Forests welcomes this next step in the implementation of the USFS Wildfire Crisis Strategy, as well as the agency’s continued commitment to the collaborative, science-backed and landscape-level approach necessary to rectify the health of our communities and our forests.