Forest Service steps up efforts to manage firesheds in western states
The U.S. Forest Service is hoping that investments in fire prevention strategies will help manage the impacts of forest fires on people and wildlife.
COURTESY PHOTO/U.S. FOREST SERVICE
LYONS, Colo. — The U.S. Forest Services announced on Monday it will spend $131 million as part of a 10-year plan to reduce wildfire risk on 208,000 across eight western states.
In a press release Monday, the Forest Service — an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture — said around 80% of the wildfire risk out west comes from 10% of the land referred to as “firesheds,” or areas where wildfire is likely to pose the greatest risk to to communities and natural resources.
“These efforts to reduce wildfire risk to communities located in these landscapes are just the beginning,” Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said during a meeting with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Deb Halaand in Colorado early Monday.
“The first-year investments are a part of a 10-year strategy to reduce the exposure of communities and infrastructure to the risk of catastrophic wildfire,” Moore said, according to the press release. “With each successive year we will plan and implement more, continuing to reduce the risks associated with extreme wildfire for communities in these vulnerable areas.”
According to a separate Forest Service report, “confronting the Wildfire Crisis,” the appropriation includes $24.6 million for the Central Washington Initiative, which aims to reduce wildfire risk and restore habitat across 1.35 million acres of Forest Service land in the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forest plus an additional 1.1 million acres of non-Forest Service land around the national forests.
The CWI will focus its efforts on 22,400 acres of land this year and an additional 100,000 acres in 2023-24. The CWI project is also set to receive an additional $75 million in funding for 2023-24, according to the Forest Service report.
Additional projects under the Forest Service’S 10-year plan to address wildfire risk include $4.5 million in 2022 to begin addressing problems on 2.6 million acres in Central Oregon, $3.6 million to start work on the 800,000-acre Kootenai Complex in Montana and northern Idaho, as well as projects in southwest Idaho, New Mexico, Colorado, California and Arizona.