America’s forests are in a state of fire emergency. Nearly a quarter of the contiguous United States is at moderate to very high risk of severe wildfires. Especially in the West, wildfires are worsening, fire years are lengthening, and the risk is growing to homes, communities and natural resources. With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the nearly $3 billion dollars intended to address this emergency, the time has come for decisive action. Last week, after months of preparing and consulting with partners, the Forest Service launched a 10-year strategy for confronting the wildfire crisis by protecting communities and improving the resilience of America’s forests. We have the science and knowledge to succeed. We know we need to build our capacity as an agency, and we are doing so. To accomplish work with and through partners we are also working with partners to map out the skills and abilities they can bring to this work. We also have put a draft implementation plan in place. With these building blocks in place, let’s get ready to act together.

As a first step, we are assembling employees and partners from across the country in a series of roundtables nationwide. A national roundtable in February will kick off the series, followed by a tribal roundtable and roundtables in every Forest Service region. The National Forest Foundation will host the national and regional roundtables and the Intertribal Timber Council will host the tribal roundtable. I ask for your support of these events. Please visit the strategy website to learn more about the strategy itself as well as our current thinking on an implementation plan.

Each roundtable will help us refine our implementation plan for the wildfire crisis strategy. The roundtables will bring together key employees and partners in separate sessions to learn about our wildfire crisis strategy and to deliberate on what we can do together to put it into action. Participants will then reach out across the agency and partner organizations to share the news and build support. Each roundtable will focus on both challenges and opportunities: the science behind our strategy, our framework for cross-boundary partnerships, our workforce and market capacities, the outcomes we want and our metrics of success, and the need for equity and inclusion as part of who we are as an agency.

The core of our wildfire crisis strategy is picking up the pace and scale of our fuels and forest health treatments to match the actual scale of wildfire risk, especially in the West. Our strategy and implementation plan specifically include priorities under our National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy—creating fire-adapted communities and sustaining long-term forest health and resilience. Our priorities also include shielding municipal watersheds and other infrastructure from wildfire, protecting critical habitats and other natural values, recovering and reforesting burned-over landscapes, and doing it all in a way that is fair, equitable and inclusive of tribal and other communities at risk. All this will be part of the discussion.

This is a national priority for the Forest Service, and leaders from across the country will help facilitate each roundtable. We will record the results for learning nationwide through roundtable reports and webinars. I urge every one of us to stay tuned and prepare to join in as we put our plan into action.

I look forward to reading your comments over on the Leadership Corner Forum (internal link). Please share your thoughts and suggestions there.