S.441 was introduced by two of the Senators who are cosponsoring FOFA. It would consolidate “federal wild land fire preparedness, suppression, and recovery efforts under an agency of the Department of the Interior.” Apparently the bill has bipartisan support. I learned about it in The Indy.
I know that CCL can't chase down every piece of legislation, but S.441 seems closely related to FOFA, though FOFA does not cover staffing or funding. Are there any plans to evaluate it?
@Rob Johnson I have no idea. I’m hoping that @Dana Nuccitelli or Jen will address this question either here or in the training this week.
It's just a simple 1-page bill to reorganize the federal wildfire response by creating a National Wildland Firefighting Service @Michelle Hamilton. It doesn't include funding but does set a plan to create a budget (which would just come from existing agency funds if no additional funds are allocated). We'll look into it a bit more. I'm not sure why it wasn't just included in Fix Our Forests.
@Dana Nuccitelli This bill is unnecessary and actually likely to damage efforts to make FOFA happen. It would pull the firefighting staff out of all the federal agencies.
It is unnecessary because there is an existing National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID. All of the federal agencies are part of it and the firefighting efforts are coordinated and prioritized through the center already. The state forestry/fire agencies also work through this center as well.
The downside is pulling all of those staffs out of the existing agencies will make it harder for the agencies to do prescribed burning and mechanical treatments to reduce the fuel loads outside of fire season. Those staffs are already integrated into doing landscape scale work on their districts. Separating these functions into separate agencies will make it harder not easier to do integrated work. It would actually make implementing FOFA more difficult. It sounds good on the surface, if you don't know how things are already structured.
I am retired from the US Forest Service and meet monthly with a group of other retirees addressing forest conservation topics. We all agree this bill is problematic.
@David Atkins
David- wonderful to have your thoughts on this. I saw this on REDIT: as part of FOFA should we Require all USFS foresters who lead projects to be SAF accredited graduates, certified foresters, and potentially graduate level education -do you think this is necessary?
@Sandra Koch - Thanks for asking Sandra. I don't think it is needed in FOFA. OPM has education course requirements to qualify as a professional forester, including a B.S. degree. The USFS established a certification program for silviculturists in the 1970's that sent foresters to graduate level courses, they had to develop a detailed prescription for treating a forest and then defend it before a panel. It was very similar to defending a master's thesis. Later they developed a similar program for wildlife biologists. Forest treatments, mechanical and prescribed fire require a silvicultural prescription prepared by or reviewed and signed off by a certified silviculturist. (I was a certified silviculturist back in the day)
For these reasons, I don't think it is necessary to include in FOFA.
@David Atkins thanks so much for the detailed response. i hope it would bring environmental groups around.
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