Federal funds head West to fight fires

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest will receive a share of $490 million the Biden administration is sending to 11 national forests across the West, it was announced Thursday morning.

The money is intended to help the agency and its partners reduce the risk of wildfires on 1.8 million acres surrounding rural communities in north central Idaho through implementation of mostly “shovel ready” projects.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the funding, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, will help protect communities, infrastructure and important natural resources threatened by catastrophic wildfires and is a key part of the U.S. Forest Service’s “Wildfire Crisis Strategy.”

“It’s not a matter of whether or not forests will burn. It’s just a matter of when,” he said.

Combined with another significant slug of funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act that was announced last spring and targeted to 10 landscapes, Vilsack said the administration has made $930 million available to reduce fire risk on 45 million acres. Last year, the Boise and Payette national forests, part of the 1.7 million acre Southwest Idaho Landscape, were included in the initial phase of funding.

“This work will span, between the two announcements, 134 of the 250 highest risk firesheds,” Vilsack said. “And we expect and anticipate that around 200 communities in the western US will see a mitigated fire risk as a result.”

The Forest Service has been working to reduce fire risk across much of the Western United States for more than a decade. During that time, fires fueled in part by a warming climate, and the poor air quality they bring, have become a normal part of summer in many regions of the West.

Still, the agency has struggled at times to make large-scale changes and some of its proposed projects have spawned lawsuits from concerned citizens who worry about the effects logging and other treatments will have on wildlife habitat and water quality.

Vilsack said the new funding is intended to protect not only rural communities but also natural resources that can be damaged by mega fires and that includes preserving old-growth forests that are normally more prone to surviving fires.

“We’re going to continue to look for ways in which we can prioritize the protection of large, mature-growth trees in order to make sure that we restore and preserve these unique and resilient stands.”

Leanne Martin, head of the agency’s Northern Region in Missoula, Mont., said there are shovel-ready projects that have already gone through public review under the National Environmental Policy Act and consultation with the Nez Perce Tribe. But she said the money will also be used to plan additional projects.

Cheryl Probert, supervisor of the Nez Perce-Clearwater, said she doesn’t yet know how much of the $490 million will be directed to the forest.

“We requested $122 million to be used to focus and really accelerate in time projects within our priority firesheds.”

The 1.8 million acres, about half of the forest, includes land in the Clearwater, Salmon and Snake river basins that is near communities. Probert said she hopes to work with partners such as the Nez Perce Tribe, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the Idaho Department of Lands and others to implement a wide range of projects.

Just a small fraction of the area will see treatments and most of that will be through prescribed fires. Probert said projects that have already cleared the public and environmental review process include 43,000 acres of prescribed burning, 5,000 acres of pre-commercial thinning and about 6,500 acres of traditional logging. The agency is targeting areas it has identified as prone to burning because of fuel loading and past fire activity.

“These are the right places to do the work,” she said.

“A lot of the projects are ready to be implemented or in some state of implantation and this money will enable us to really move forward in getting those projects done and as well as getting the planning and analysis done on additional projects to address the wildfire crisis.”

Probert hopes the Nez Perce Tribe will be a key partner in the work and said the agency has worked hard to build a positive relationship with tribal leaders that will “make it possible for us to do some really exciting, groundbreaking work together, in terms of giving them more agency in stewarding these ceded lands.”

“That is really exciting to see and I’m really grateful for all the time and energy their staff and leadership has put into working with the Forest,” she added.

Tribal leaders were not immediately available for comment.

Funding will also help address fire threat on 3 million acres of the San Carlos Apache Tribal Forest Protection Project, 4 million acres in Southern California, 910,000 acres on the Trinity National Forest in Northern California, 1 million acres on the Mount Hood National Forest, 10 million acres in the Klamath River Basin on the California-Oregon stateline, 3.4 million acres in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California and Nevada, 420,000 in Pine Valley Utah, 1.3 million acres in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and 1.6 million acres on the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.