Why it 4FRI important? At our Region 2 Wildfire Strategy Roundtable, I heard “entrepreneurs need some guarantees for supply.” Which makes sense. But as we have seen, that and “having NEPA done” hasn’t necessarily worked out as well as expected for a variety of reasons that are important to understand. Since they are the main pioneers in the efforts to do fuel treatments at scale in places without existing infrastructure sufficient to process the material (a common problem across the west), I think it’s worth understanding their context to help understand how replicable it is in other places.
Here’s a handy chart of what they accomplished by year.
Here’s the January accomplishment report. It includes a list of NEPA projects and NEPA status.
Most of those numbers are White Mountain Stewardship mechanical, and “fire use” acres from the four forests….
Jim Z.. It looks to me as if “most” are PF and what used to be called WFU. Of the thinned acres it looks like 19 of the 232 are from the White Mountain. Or am I reading this wrong?
I can tell you from 2010 until contract term we averaged 8,000 acres mechanical/year on WMS. We could have done much more, up to 15,000 acres/year but our funds were cut to prop up 4-FRI…. The WFU was from all four forests, don’t remember the breakdown. 4-Fri #1 wasn’t awarded until 2012; took two more years to actually begin work.
And looking ahead: https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/rim-country-project-plan-paves-way-for-more-arizona-forest-restoration-projects
“The first signed off on in 2015 covered the southern part of the Kaibab and the northern Coconino national forests. The Rim Country Project covers 1,875 square miles (4,856 square kilometers) in the southern part of the Coconino, northern Tonto and the west side of the Apache-Sitgreaves forests — near the communities of Payson, Heber-Overgaard and Show Low.”