Sponsors (6)
Introduced June 10, 2025 by Ronald Lee Wyden · Last progress June 10, 2025
The bill increases prescribed burning, long-term restoration, tribal support, and workforce capacity to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk, but those benefits come with increased short-term smoke exposure, funding and administrative trade-offs, and new liability/implementation challenges that must be managed.
Rural communities, local governments, and landscapes across the West will see expanded, coordinated prescribed burning and landscape-scale restoration that reduces severe wildfire risk and future fire damage.
Federal and nonfederal firefighters and seasonal workers will gain better pay, hiring pathways to permanent jobs, and expanded recruitment/training programs, improving job stability and workforce capacity for fuels management.
Tribes and Tribal lands receive priority consideration, funding support, and partnership opportunities to protect Tribal trust resources, treaty rights, and participate in cross-boundary restoration.
Nearby residents and communities will face increased short-term smoke exposure and related air-quality and health impacts when prescribed burns are expanded.
The Act redirects and may require new federal spending (including potential FTCA exposure for non‑Federal partners), creating budget trade-offs and possible higher taxpayer costs or reduced funding for other suppression/post-fire activities.
Caps on program funding (e.g., $20M/year and $1M per project) and limits on eligible uses could prevent large or long-term restoration projects from receiving adequate federal support.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Allows agencies to use up to 15% of hazardous‑fuels funds for prescribed fire work, expands partnerships and workforce authorities, requires reporting, and sets 10‑year acreage increase goals.
Authorizes federal land agencies to expand prescribed fire use by allowing them to reallocate up to 15% of certain hazardous-fuels appropriations to support planning, implementation, training, smoke management, and cross-boundary work. It creates partnership and workforce authorities (long-term agreements, cooperative agreements, task forces, hazard-pay rules, and pathways to permanent jobs), sets prioritization criteria for where prescribed fire funding should be used, requires state reporting of prescribed-fire accomplishments, and mandates annual implementation reporting to Congress, including goals to increase federal prescribed-fire acreage over a 10-year period.