The Wildfire Crisis Strategy: How it started, how it’s going, and how RMRS science contributes
In 2022, the Forest Service released a report titled “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests”. The report laid the foundation for how the Forest Service intends to leverage billions of dollars from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, commonly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or BIL, over the next decade. Citing increasing wildfire risk to lives, homes, communities, and infrastructure and a need to improve the health and resilience of forests across the Western U.S., this new Wildfire Crisis Strategy set ambitious goals for increasing the pace and scale of fuel treatments, while using the best available science as a guide. This seminar is the kick-off for a series that will highlight some of the science from the Rocky Mountain Research Station that informed the initial framing of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy and that could continue to inform it as it evolves over the coming years. We will cover some background of how we got to where we are, a sampling of ongoing efforts related to the BIL or Wildfire Crisis Strategy, and an outline of topics included in the upcoming series of seminars.