Confronting the Wildfire Crisis

In January 2022, the Forest Service launched a robust, 10-year strategy to address the wildfire crisis in the places where it poses the most immediate threats to communities. The strategy, called “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests,” (leer en español) combines a historic investment of congressional funding with years of scientific research and planning into a national effort that will dramatically increase the scale and pace of forest health treatments over the next decade. Through the strategy, the agency will work with states, Tribes and other partners to addresses wildfire risks to critical infrastructure, protect communities, and make forests more resilient.

In early 2023, the USDA Forest Service added 11 additional landscapes. This announcement followed a year of progress in collaborating with partners across 10 initial landscapes to address wildfire risk to infrastructure and communities.

Year 3 – 2024 – nearly $500 million investment expands critical work to reduce wildfire risk.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on February 20, 2024 that the United States Department of Agriculture is investing nearly $500 million to expand work on the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy to reduce wildfire risk to communities, critical infrastructure and natural resources from the nation’s wildfire crisis.

Approximately $400 million of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds will be allocated to ongoing efforts on the 21 priority landscapes across the West. This work is beginning to reduce wildfire risk for some 550 communities, 2,500 miles of power lines and 1,800 watersheds.

An additional $100 million will be allocated through a collaborative process with tribes, communities, and partners as part of new agency-established program – the Collaborative Wildfire Risk Reduction Program. Inspired by past examples and the success of programs such as the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the new Collaborative Wildfire Risk Reduction Program expands work in high-risk wildfire areas outside the 21 priority landscapes.

These landscapes and efforts to expand the work under the Wildfire Crisis Strategy are determined using scientific research and analysis that considers the likelihood that an ignition could expose homes, communities, infrastructure, and natural resources to wildfire.

In 2023, the Forest Service and a wide-range of partners, communities, and tribes treated more than 4.3 million acres of hazardous fuels, including nearly two million acres of prescribed burning, on National Forest System lands across the nation – both are record highs in the agency’s 119-year history and over a million acres more accomplished than the previous year.