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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022
Nathan Howard/AP Photo
A sign damaged by the Bootleg fi re is seen among the haze near Paisley in July.
US adds $103M for wildfi re hazards, land rehabilitation
By KEITH RIDLER
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — The
U.S. is adding $103 million
this year for wildfi re risk
reduction and burned-area
rehabilitation
throughout
the country as well as estab-
lishing an interagency wild-
land fi refi ghter health and
well-being program, Inte-
rior Secretary Deb Haaland
announced Friday.
Haaland
made
the
announcement following a
briefi ng on this year’s wild-
fi re season at the National
Interagency Fire Center in
Boise, which coordinates the
nation’s wildland fi refi ght-
ing eff orts.
The U.S. is having one
of its worst starts to the
wildfi re season with more
than 30,000 wildfi res that
have scorched 4,600 square
miles. That’s well above the
10-year average for the same
period, about 23,500 wild-
fi res and 1,800 square miles
burned.
About $80 million will
be used to speed up work
removing potential wild-
fi re hazards on more than
3,000 square miles of Inte-
rior Department lands, a
30% increase over last year.
Another $20 million will be
used to bolster post-wildfi re
landscape recovery.
The money is coming
from the $1 trillion infra-
structure deal President Joe
Biden signed late last year.
“As wildfi re seasons
become longer, more intense
and more dangerous, Pres-
ident Biden’s Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law is bring-
ing much-needed sup-
port to communities across
the country to increase the
resilience of lands and bet-
ter support federal wildland
fi refi ghters,” Haaland said.
The fi refi ghter well-be-
ing program that includes
the U.S. Forest Service will
address physical and men-
tal health needs for seasonal
and year-round wildland
fi refi ghters, and will include
post-traumatic stress disor-
der care. The fi re center in
recent years has started mak-
ing eff orts to encourage fi re-
fi ghters to seek mental health
help after an increase in
wildland fi refi ghter suicides.
“Wildland
fi refi ghters
work in incredibly stressful
environments that can take a
signifi cant toll on their over-
all health and well-being, as
well as on those who love
them,” Haaland said. “Stand-
ing up a targeted interagency
eff ort to provide trauma-in-
formed mental health care is
critical.”
The Interior Depart-
ment’s program will estab-
lish year-round prevention
and mental-health training
for wildland fi refi ghters.
The Interior Department’s
Offi ce of Wildland Fire
will help create a new sys-
tem for trauma support ser-
vices that emphasizes early
intervention.
About $3 million will
be used for climate-related
research that includes land-
scape resiliency, prescribed
fi re, carbon storage and
greenhouse gas and smoke
emissions.
Some of the money will
be used to continue develop-
ing a wildfi re risk mapping
and mitigation tool that’s
being developed by the For-
est Service and the National
Association of State For-
esters. That tool could help
identify high-risk areas and
make them a priority for
treatment.
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“We work with fi re years
now — it’s no longer a fi re
season,” said Jeff Rupert, the
Interior Department’s direc-
tor of the Offi ce of Wildland
Fire, who took part in Fri-
day’s announcement. “That
means that we have to do
the hard work of reducing
fi re risk and recovering after
fi res at the same time that
we’re responding to fi res.”
With the latest fi nancial
support, “we’re investing in
all of these phases,” he said.
Haaland also visited the
U.S. Geological Survey in
Boise, where scientists are
working to better understand
the sagebrush steppe in the
West that has been plagued
with giant wildfi res in recent
decades as invasive species,
notably cheatgrass, have
moved in. Scientists want to
make the areas more resis-
tant to wildfi res and help
them recover.
“The science is ongo-
ing,” Haaland said. “I want
you to know that all of us —
all of the departments, the
bureaus, the offi ces at the
Department of the Interior,
of which the USGS is one —
we’re all working together
to make sure that the science
compliments the work that
the fi refi ghters are doing.”
Wildfi re seasons have
become increasingly longer
as climate change has made
the West much warmer and
drier in the past 30 years,
and scientists have long
warned that the weather
will get wilder as the world
warms.
“One thing is profoundly
clear,” Haaland said. “Cli-
mate change will continue
to make fi res in the West
larger, and we must continue
to invest in conservation of
our ecosystem. Nature is
our greatest ally in our fi ght
against climate change.”
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