![](https://forestpolicypub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/aspen-inst-1.jpg)
Rumor has it that Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack and Chief Moore will make an announcement about the 10 year plan next Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Aspen Institute and TNC convened a set of folks (would it be overreaching to say “many of the usual suspects”? you decide, guest list here).
Here’s a link to the report.
Earlier we received some inklings about the work of the WRRIT from Chief Moore at the SAF Convention as described in this “premonitions” post.. Here’s what the Aspen/TNC report says.
In September 2021, the Forest Service established an internal Wildfire Risk Reduction Infrastructure Team (WRRIT) to develop a ten-year strategic implementation plan to address wildfire resilience across the U.S.
WRRIT is working to:
1) clearly understand the funding and legislative requirements (including congressional direction), and how to prioritize hazardous fuels, prescribed fire, and workforce development projects;
2) identify the internal needs to operationalize the incoming surges in funds, specifically related to capacity, internal policy, infrastructure, technology, and business practices, among others;
3) develop strategic plans and designs to address wildfire resilience at scale while providing flexibility for geographic differences; and
4) socialize and communicate the science and scenario planning, as well as how to engage with employees, partners, and others to get their input and communicate the need for action.
I’m for any team who has an objective of socializing, but I’m not sure that we mean the same thing by the term..
As we talked about before, a key difficulty with national prioritization has been pushback from those who would receive less. Pluse there’s already many different prioritization processes in place.. for example Colorado has its own risk mapping to focus mitigation priorities. Here’s what this group had to say:
Forest Service leadership explained that firesheds will be a major component of the initial prioritization process, yet many participants expressed concern about using the fireshed model as the base map or as the only prioritization tool. For instance, congressional constraints may not align perfectly with fireshed model parameters. In addition, many states are neither familiar with nor using the “firesheds” concept and few have adopted the prioritization tool as part of their State Forest Action Plans. Workshop participants suggested that location in critical firesheds could be a criteria and a preference, but perhaps should not be a definitive requirement. Instead, participants offered that there could be multiple screens used to identify priority locations, and the agency should find ways to move between and sequence screens based on context. Additional prioritization screens could include watersheds and collaborative planning (e.g., Community Wildfire Protection Plans, shared stewardship agreements, forest action plans).
Equity Considerations
Advancing greater equity will also likely play into the criteria for selecting priority landscapes. For example, starting with projects that have collaborative history might make sense, but those are often places with a history of investment and an active partner environment (e.g., universities, NGOs, and other active stakeholders). Focusing solely on these high-capacity areas, despite being high risk, can leave behind certain places and communities, including those that have been historically underserved. Participants agreed that there must be a balance between projects that are ready to go (in places that have capacity, created by the existing system) and investments in those places that could benefit from increased capacity and outcomes. If criteria and prioritization screens do not explicitly include equity considerations, the need for expediency will likely lead to investment in the usual places, projects, and groups, and not result in the needed paradigm shift.
There has definitely been a sense of “them that has, gets” in terms of CFLRPs and other funding sources. However, it might be desirable to define more clearly what we mean by “underserved.” Ideally it would be desirable to bring each area up to “CFLRP level” in terms of interested universities, partners and so on. It might take other colors of dollars to support that capacity. In fact, building the underserved to CFLRP-like capacity would be a useful exercise far beyond wildfire resilience IMHO.
One way to plan for fuel management and fire response is to use Potential Operation Delineations (PODs). PODs are fire management planning units that are defined by boundaries like roads and ridge tops, within which risks can be quantified. While there is significant funding targeted for POD adoption, it is not yet a widely known practice. The agency is making strong investments into the development of PODs and those will likely have to be brought into the agency’s work in years 1-2.
Implementing the surge in funding will likely require recognizing local context and variation and PODs could be a way to increase the application of prescribed fire and sustaining investments
This group seems to like PODS, but hasn’t gone as far as I’ve suggested- to put a time-out to NFMA planning and work on PODs and fire planning for each western forest until they are all designated and NEPAed.
There were apparently no techie people at this conference, so perhaps that’s the reason for this rather gloomy observation..
Industry can play the role of removing material off the forest and utilizing products in innovative ways. However, too often the material is of low or no value. Participants noted that industry capacity takes time to build, and supply may need to be guaranteed. However, there needs to be more discussion about how to remove material that simply has no value and the investment needed to remove that material as a service rather than for profit.
Paying to remove it to me doesn’t really help to solve the problem of what to do with it. I think everyone agrees burning it in piles is suboptimal for climate. Then it’s a complicated question of how to use it in such a way as to reduce costs to the taxpayer, keep it out of the atmosphere, and make a profit if possible. Maybe that’s the next workshop…
Then there’s some of the usual partnership/EADM observations.. including the idea of a “partnership modernization effort” like the recent forest products modernization effort.
Complex Processes
Navigating the agency’s contracting system can be difficult. Contract administration, compliance, recordkeeping, reporting, accounting, and liability insurance are hard for potential partners, especially those with limited capacity. Some partners shared that it can be hard to advance local innovative approaches that end up getting stalled as they run through layers of bureaucracy. Other complex processes raised included wildfire liability insurance, cancellation and termination clauses in stewardship contracts, and reimbursements instead of upfront funding. Agency standards (e.g., multi-party stewardship agreements, revisions to template arrangements) and national level approval processes should be nimbler.
Personnel Transition Management
Inconsistent personnel can pose an additional challenge for partners. Detailees and personnel lost to fire assignments represent barriers to relationship building. Partnerships rely on building trusting relationships, which can be challenging when Forest Service employees move frequently.
As surges in funding materialize, participants agreed that the agency needs to assess its internal policies and systems to see where it can reduce hurdles to partnerships. There may be a need for partner liaisons — which could be inside or outside the agency — to help navigate partnership challenges. More broadly, the agency may need to pursue a partnership modernization effort, like the recent forest products modernization effort.
I’m a fan of Forest Products Modernization. To me it’s partially an internal exchange of neat ideas and projects among FS people, but it’s hard to develop a picture (from the outside) of changes to procedures and removing barriers.. maybe an annual summary of those kinds of changes would be helpful? Maybe they are there, but I haven’t seen them.
Anyway, if you’re interested, take a look at the recommendations and see if you find any surprising, or support or take issue with any.