Chief Moore and Secretary Vilsack Announce New Wildfire Strategy

Smokey Wire Folks… you are invited to comment on any of the documents on this Confronting the Wildfire Crisis website.  There’s much to discuss, so we may have to break the topics down later.

Confronting the wildfire crisis: A new strategy for protecting communities and improving resilience in America’s forests


Official Portrait: Chief Randy Moore.
Chief Randy Moore

Please join USDA Secretary Vilsack and me virtually today at about 1:40 p.m. Eastern as we announce a new national strategy to confront the wildfire crisis facing the nation, which has threatened and destroyed lives, homes, land and communities, especially in the West. This historical announcement marks a paradigm shift in the scale of our fuels and forest health treatments to match the actual scale of wildfire risk.

For some time now, our limited resources have constrained us. Despite that challenge, your “Can Do” spirit allowed us to go above and beyond what should have been possible. Our collective efforts have yielded astonishing results and earned the trust of communities and lawmakers.

That said, we all know there is still so much work to do. Climate change is driving hotter, longer and more severe wildfire seasons, and wildfire behavior is becoming less predictable. Because of your efforts and the relationships you have created and maintained, our approach to these challenges is about to change. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides nearly $3 billion to reduce hazardous fuels and restore America’s forests and grasslands, along with investments in fire-adapted communities and post fire reforestation.

This investment and the public trust to deliver results require us all to change the way we think about our work. We must think innovatively about how to use these resources to confront the wildfire crisis in the West. This is the core of our mission to sustain the health and diversity of the nation’s forests. This is what we’ve been working toward for so long, together.

Take a moment to let this sink in. We can change the trajectory of catastrophic wildfires in the West. We will capitalize on our science, partner relationships and land management expertise to confront the massive scale of the problem. This is our moment to innovate. Let’s not be afraid of what is unknown, rather focus on what can be with our collective effort. All our priorities matter and we will work together to achieve them.

As the challenges we face in land management evolve, so must our approach to those challenges. We must open the door to engage and co-develop into the future. The Forest Service will work with other federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, and with tribes, states, local communities, private and family landowners, industry and other partners to focus fuels and forest health treatments more strategically and at the scale of the problem based on the best available science. Working together toward common goals across boundaries and jurisdictions is essential to the future of these landscapes and the people who live there. We’re in this together.

Our values will guide us on this journey. I have never felt them more aligned to our work than now. Service—I can’t think of anything more significant than improving the health and resilience of millions of acres of forests and grasslands and protecting numerous communities across the United States. Interdependence—We can’t do this alone. We need partners, those we know and those we are yet to engage, and communities to help us achieve success. Conservation—This work is the definition of conservation. Diversity—We’re going to use new ideas and bring in different perspectives to confront this crisis. The strength we will derive from different experiences and understanding of this work, including insights from traditional ecological knowledge and historically underserved communities, will be an important part of our success. Safety—We’re protecting communities and improving health through clean air and water, and lessening contributions to climate change. This effort will also help our wildland firefighters, providing them with safer anchor points in and around treated areas as they continue to do critical suppression work to protect communities, watersheds and critical infrastructure.

We already have the tools, the knowledge and the partnerships in place to begin this work and now we have the funding that will allow us to build on the research and the lessons learned to address this wildfire crisis facing many of our communities. I thank Congress, the president and the American people for entrusting us with this important work.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Please visit the Confronting the Wildfire Crisis website for more details about the new strategy.

 

Artwork: Wildfire Crisis Strategy.
The 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy will allow us to treat up to an additional 20 million acres on National Forest System lands; treat up to an additional 30 million acres of other federal, tribal, state & privately owned lands; and develop a plan for long-term forest maintenance that extends beyond the 10-year strategy. USDA Forest Service artwork by Caitlin Garas.

18 thoughts on “Chief Moore and Secretary Vilsack Announce New Wildfire Strategy”

  1. Again, it is quite ironic that the Forest Service will need an army of inexperienced Temporary Employees to accomplish their new goals. It will be ‘interesting’ to see the blame game happen when goals are not met. It will also be interesting how they will claim “acres treated”. It’s disingenuous to count acres twice, in the same year.

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  2. Ah come on Larry, are you kidding me? The FS can actually “count” those same treated acres four or five times! I was burning some “Grasslands” target one year while updating my burn boss certification and was actually doing “high priority” hazardous fuels! Hazardous fuels? It was prairie grasslands; beat anything I ever saw…

    Of course I totally agree with you, having a cadre of technicians to pick this up and run with it will not prove too successful – if past experience is any indicator. I would like to see what was said; Albuquerque Service Center is fast filling their Rolodex (? 🤣) of excuses to respond to those poor folks sitting in district offices, with the DR pacing circles down the hall….

    Maybe, just maybe something shakes loose and allows for some credible treatment!

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    • It is often said that things have to completely breakdown in order for proper change to come to the Agency. Congress was convinced of the plight of those poor underpaid firefighters, but no one cares about the rest of the Forestry Technicians, who get paid the same amount (and who also fight fires, when needed). This might be the ‘Big Fail’ needed, to value the yearly work of qualified Forestry Technicians, who are limited to only 1039 regular hours during a year. How much would it cost to hire some as Permanent Seasonals?

      Someone has to tell Congress about this….. AGAIN! (Congress considers these to be ‘student summer jobs’ ) Tell them that parts of their 50 billion dollar plans are dependent on GS-3 Temporary Employees, with no forestry experience.

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  3. Jack Cohen says “same old – same old.”
    https://missoulian.com/news/local/fire-strategy-stuck-with-old-tactics-experts-warn/article_d8361d9f-2fb5-5f47-a333-e3487e49530d.html

    “Cohen found no evidence that the writers considered best available science, which shows that wildland-urban disasters are mainly a factor of how houses catch fire, not forest management, he said.

    He cited extensive research explaining how community wildfire destruction (incidents where more than 100 homes get destroyed) happens when fires overrun the fuel breaks and forest treatments intended to control them. But it’s not the “big flames of high intensity wildfires (that) cause total home destruction,” but rather “lofted burning embers (firebrands) on the home and low intensity surface fire spreading to contact the home” that did the damage, often hours after the main fire had subsided or moved elsewhere.”

    “The press release and full document are just more of the same management that enables continuation of the wildfire problem,” Cohen concluded. He also said it doesn’t acknowledge the Forest Service’s “inherent management aversion to fires burning at landscape scales that cannot be under tight control.”

    A county commissioner (with Forest Service fire experience on his resume) said he couldn’t find the words “home ignition zone” anywhere in the document.

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      • From the Missoulian article: “The strategy calls for treating up to 20 million acres of national forest lands and up to 30 million acres of other federal, tribal, state and private lands over the next 10 years.”

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      • Not usually, within 200 feet of home? There are other parts of the Infrastructure Bill and appropriations that usually go through S&PF for communities, things like CWPPs, education, support for local firefighting resources and suchlike.

        I’d hope a County Commissioner would be familiar with CWPPs.

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        • Exactly my point: the WUI is generally not within the USFS’s jurisdiction – it is privately owned and managed under other legal authorities (like local land use zoning laws). Faulting the Forest Service for not doing something on land it doesn’t manage seems…misplaced.

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          • The Forest Service is being given money to treat 30 million non-FS acres (it’s even in the graphic above). They should be figuring out how to get that within 200 feet of homes. More generally, the WUI is within the USFS’s jurisdiction often enough to have lawsuits about how that designation should affect national forest management within the boundaries. And as a planning issue, I’ve raised questions about forest plans that say WUI on their lands will affect how they manage them. Conceptually, I think the point should just be to put this money as close to the values at risk as possible.

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    • Hmm. I also have an aversion to “any fires burning at landscape scales that cannot be under tight control” as do my neighbors.. sorry Jack! Maybe the FS is responding to the wishes of people who are concerned about their safety…

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  4. I think he was saying that the FS is including a role for fire in the strategy that isn’t realistic. Here’s some relevant language from the strategy:

    “To restore
    forest health and reduce wildfire risk, a
    large multiorganizational workforce with
    expertise in proactive fuels and forest
    health management is needed for thinning
    forests, conducting prescribed fires, and
    using lightning fires and other “unplanned
    ignitions” to return fire to the land and
    restore forest health.
    About half the land area of the National
    Forest System in the West is in wilderness
    areas, roadless areas, and other areas where
    forest thinning is restricted by law, regulation,
    or terrain. In these places, land managers
    can use prescribed fire as well as unplanned
    ignitions to reduce hazardous fuels and
    restore forest health. Most such landscapes
    are remote, and fires there usually have
    little or no impact on the WUI. However,
    a specialized workforce is still needed to
    carefully monitor the fires and put them out if
    they cross certain boundaries for safety.”

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  5. Fire strategy stuck with old tactics, experts warn
    By Rob Chaney, Missoulian (January 20, 2022)
    https://forestpolicypub.com/2022/01/20/missoulian-fire-strategy-stuck-with-old-tactics-experts-warn/

    Although it uses the words “paradigm shift” 13 times, the U.S. Forest Service’s new wildfire crisis strategy appears stuck on old tactics, according to area fire experts.

    “I saw no new strategy but rather a potential increase in the same fire control strategy of ‘fuel treatment’ to enhance fire control,” retired Forest Service fire scientist Jack Cohen said after reviewing the documents released on Tuesday.

    On Tuesday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced plans to spend upward of $50 billion to fight catastrophic wildfire. The strategy focuses on “firesheds” — forest landscapes of about 250,000 acres that are likely to burn and have lots of homes and infrastructure at risk.

    Those firesheds would get intensive work to return 35-45% of their acreage to fire-adapted conditions through hazardous fuels removal, logging and prescribed fires.

    The plan identifies five firesheds in Montana, including four along the Idaho border in the Lolo, Bitterroot and Nez-Perce/Clearwater national forests, and one in the Flathead National Forest surrounding Kalispell.

    The strategy calls for treating up to 20 million acres of national forest lands and up to 30 million acres of other federal, tribal, state and private lands over the next 10 years. Nationwide, the strategy will create 300,000 to 575,000 jobs, protect property values, and stimulate local economies.

    That represents a tempo of work four times greater than current activity in the West, the report claims.

    It should also bring down the Forest Service’s annual firefighting costs, which averaged $1.9 billion a year between 2016 and 2020. 

    The report notes that wildfires in 2020, 2017 and 2015 burned a total of more than 10 million acres. The National Interagency Fire Center has stopped labeling fires larger than 100,000 acres as exceptional events, because they have become so common.

    Missoula is home to the Forest Service’s Fire Sciences Lab as well as an extensive community of academic and professional forestry and fire experts. It started developing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan in 2005, and updated it in 2018.

    “The use of tired, old, ill-defined language such as ‘hazardous fuels’ does little to describe what the fuels (i.e., wildland vegetation) is hazardous to,” said Missoula County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier, who helped revise the latest version of the plan. “We seem to have learned nothing from recent fires that have resulted in community destruction, such as Denton, Montana. This was a grass fire, and there were no forests to thin or otherwise eliminate the risk of crown fire from.”

    The West Wind fire on Nov. 30 destroyed 25 homes and six commercial buildings in Denton, including the town’s granary. The Marshall fire on Dec. 30 burned almost 1,100 houses with an estimated $513 million in total damage. It was primarily a grass fire pushed by 110 mph winds.

    And despite 11 of the report’s 23 photo illustrations depicting burned houses or fire-threatened neighborhoods, Strohmaier couldn’t find the words “home ignition zone” anywhere in the document.

    “Community destruction is (a home ignition zone), not a fire control problem,” Strohmaier said. Throwing more money at treatments that won’t get the expected outcomes “does no one any good and sets up false expectations as to what will truly reduce the risk of community destruction and improve ecological and community resilience.”

    Cohen found no evidence that the writers considered best available science, which shows that wildland-urban disasters are mainly a factor of how houses catch fire, not forest management, he said.

    He cited extensive research explaining how community wildfire destruction (incidents where more than 100 homes get destroyed) happens when fires overrun the fuel breaks and forest treatments intended to control them. But it’s not the “big flames of high intensity wildfires (that) cause total home destruction,” but rather “lofted burning embers (firebrands) on the home and low intensity surface fire spreading to contact the home” that did the damage, often hours after the main fire had subsided or moved elsewhere.

    At the same time, Cohen noted that the fireshed approach appears headed in two contradictory directions. On one hand, it acknowledges the need for large-scale burning to improve forest health and ecology. But it doesn’t acknowledge the Forest Service’s “inherent management aversion to fires burning at landscape scales that cannot be under tight control.”

    “The press release and full document are just more of the same management that enables continuation of the wildfire problem,” Cohen concluded.

    The Wildfire Today blog reviewed the strategy with an eye for its funding. It noted that the Forest Service called for an additional $2 billion a year to get ahead of its hazardous fuels backlog.

    “The growth of the climate crisis, which has contributed to the ‘wildfire crisis,’ appears to be exceeding the estimates of scientists,” Wildfire Today moderator Bill Gabbert wrote on Tuesday. “Changes are occurring even more quickly than previously expected. So low-balling the funding for protecting our homeland will mean we will fall even further behind in treating fuels and attempting to keep fires from wiping out more communities.”

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  6. The point is the huge amount of money going to the forest service should instead go to communities for hardening home and focussing on the home ignition zone.

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    • The bigger point is that the money is signed, sealed and delivered. The Forest Service must use the money as Congress specified in the bill. However, it seems that the Forest Service has plenty of freedom to utilize (or waste) the money, as the great unknown barrels towards them. Congress gave them a lot of money, but didn’t address the Agency’s other problems.

      I took a look at the plan’s implementation summary, and there was a minimal mention saying “develop workforce”, with no specific (or even vague) plans to do so.

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      • Larry, from what I’ve heard even from commenters here the FS does have a plan to develop the workforce.
        Also, at the Aspen Conference partners said they could help with personnel.

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        • The key word is “develop”. That implies that there really isn’t a workforce currently, to do the planned work. I estimate that just on the timber producing Ranger Districts in Region 5, the Forest Service will need 500 Forestry Techs, for timber crews. They will also need a few hundred ‘Ologists’ to deal with a doubling or tripling of thinning projects in California. Then there’s the TSAs and CORs for every RD. Are those positions being ‘developed’? OR, do they know there is not that kind of expertise out there, waiting for vacancy announcements? The fire folks aren’t going to have much ‘spare time’ to help out in timber.

          PLUS, there will be a need for different people to work on the fire salvage projects, at the same time.

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    • There is much money going to communities via the States in the Infrastructure bill.. but Michele, many communities at least in Colorado, do strategic fuel treatments beyond 200 feet. The HIZ is important but it’s not the whole story.

      Reply

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