Here’s the Chief’s welcome back:
I’m profoundly grateful to welcome our furloughed employees back as the government reopens. Your return reflects the resilience and commitment that define the Forest Service. Please know that this interruption was never a reflection of the immense value Americans place on your service.
To those who continued working during this time, thank you. Working without the full team beside you was difficult, and your perseverance deserves recognition. You kept our mission moving forward when it mattered most.
Despite the disruption, we accomplished a great deal together. We advanced timber sales that strengthen local economies, kept recreation sites open and safe for public enjoyment, and carried out critical wildfire response and active management work, including more than 127,000 acres of prescribed fire to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to communities.
Our Law Enforcement and Investigations teams patrolled forests and safeguarded visitors, while Business Operations ensured continuity by managing payments, contracts, grants and agreements. These efforts—alongside countless other essential actions—reflect the unwavering dedication across our agency.
I look forward to getting the entire team back together to continue and build upon the work that we’ve begun this new fiscal year. As we resume full operations, the Work Environment and Performance Office is mobilizing resources and organizing sessions for employees and supervisors. We will create space to reconnect, rebuild and support one another through this next phase of change. Stay tuned for invitations in your inbox.
Welcome back and thanks for all you do!
The Hotshot Wakeup has a post with more detailed accomplishments by forest.
There’s also a story in the LA Times which has much of the same info and makes it sound like the FS is behind the State in acres. But note that this shows all treatments not just PF.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has challenged the federal government to match state investments in wildfire risk reduction work, and in July even sent the White House a draft executive order that Newsom said would accomplish exactly that.
In 2021, the state and U.S. Forest Service agreed to ramp up their yearly fuel treatment work in California to 500,000 acres each by 2025.
In 2023, the most recent year both state and federal data are available, the state reached 415,000 acres, and the Forest Service reached 311,000, according to a state dashboard. From 2021 to 2024, the state invested $4.3 billion to complete that work, whereas the Forest Service invested $3.1 billion.
The State Dashboard is pretty interesting. For one thing, it’s now 2025 and the 2024 info is apparently not available (or is available, but not on the Dashboard)
Another interesting thing is that CalTrans did almost as much as CalFire and Fish and Wildlife plus CalTrans did more than CalFire. Also the pie chart shows the activity acres as Fed 40% and State 25% which doesn’t seem to agree with the totals in the news story. Oh well.
New EPA Guidance on Prescribed Fire
Speaking of prescribed fire, this is good news that I don’t think we covered here before with new EPA guidance. At least I think it’s good news, because the air quality regs are so complicated.
2 Consistent with Section 4(a) of EO 14308, the EPA discourages states from including regulatory provisions that could serve to limit the strategic deployment of wildland prescribed fire conducted for the purposes of land management or wildfire mitigation within SIPs as part of the control strategy for attainment and maintenance of the NAAQS, or the regional haze program.
Maybe someone can explain or point us to an explanation for those who aren’t experts?
NIFC has some pretty good background on the relationship between smoke management and the Clean Air Act:
https://www.nifc.gov/programs/smoke-management
The story below focuses on the recent EPA initiative and contains a link to the EPA memorandum announcing the new smoke management policy:
https://environmentallawmonitor.com/wildfires/fighting-fire-with-fire-epa-issues-guidance-promoting-prescribed-fires-to-help-prevent-catastrophic-wildfires/
Many states, in their EPA-approved state implementation plans (SIPs), restrict prescribed burning to ensure that state air quality meets Clean Air Act limits. I think the purpose of the EPA memo is to provide legal cover for states to amend their SIPs to reduce or remove those restrictions.
Whether this will result in real change on the ground remains to be seen. Some of those SIP smoke-restricting regulations are there for political as well as legal reasons; some state air regulators will be in no hurry to loosen them and risk voter ire. Industries emitting regulated air pollutants may not welcome the new EPA move, as it may expose them to litigation (and/or public pressure) seeking to force them to reduce their emissions further to bring the (newly smoky) air back into compliance. It’s possible the EPA initiative itself does not comply with the act.
I’m all for creative solutions to this vexing problem, but it may be best to view the EPA move as another possibly constructive step along the road, rather than the final destination.
Thanks, Rich, that helps a great deal! I like your choice of words “another possibly constructive step”.. so many changes fit that definition. It’s headed in the right direction, but it’s one piece of a complicated biological/physical/regulatory/legal/political puzzle with unknown ultimate effects.