Thank you, and welcome! It’s a real pleasure to be here with my colleagues from Canada and Mexico. I am very pleased that we can host you here in Missoula because it will give you a chance to learn more about some of the forest-related resources and issues in this region. I am honored to have the opportunity to represent the United States and to learn from you this week.
As you might know, the mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. Our mission has resonated with me throughout my career because my passion is connecting people with their natural resources. Our mission is based on interdependencies of people and natural resources … of people and communities across jurisdictions.
We have long had a special relationship with you, our North American neighbors. The forested landscapes that we manage here in the United States are interconnected with the forested landscapes that you manage as well. The same goes for the challenges we face, whether the effects of a changing climate … whether drought, wildfires, invasive species, outbreaks of insects and disease, and more.
We deeply appreciate the opportunity to work with you to meet our mutual forest-related challenges. We are very grateful for your assistance during severe fire years, which are happening more and more. We appreciate our interconnectedness with you and our mutual reliance. Interdependence is a core value for the U.S. Forest Service.
That is why our national priorities at the U.S. Forest Service include being a good neighbor and sharing stewardship for the lands and resources we manage across shared landscapes. I will briefly describe some of our corresponding initiatives in the last two years.
Fire-Related Challenges
Shared stewardship and being a good neighbor both depend on partnerships for forest management to improve the condition of the land. As you might know, about 32 million hectares across the National Forest System are at risk from catastrophic wildfire, and hundreds of millions of hectares in other landownerships in the United States are also at risk.
In the last two years alone, wildfires burned almost 7.6 million hectares across our nation and destroyed more than 26,000 residences. Worse, more than a hundred people died in wildfire entrapments, often while fleeing their homes. Over the last few decades, the fire season in the western United States has grown at least two-and-a-half months longer, and we have seen the frequency, size, and severity of wildfires grow. Primary drivers are climate change, drought, hazardous fuel buildups, and the spread of homes and communities into fire-prone landscapes.
To meet the challenge, we are using every tool and authority we have to protect communities and improve the health of our nation’s forests. The tools we have include timber sales, mechanical thinning, targeted grazing, herbicides in some cases, stewardship contracts, and prescribed fire. Our tools also include fire prevention programs, community wildfire protection plans, and Firewise practices for homes and communities to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire.
The authorities we have include the appropriate use of environmental assessment and decision making—using sound science and data to make sound decisions. Last year, the United States Congress gave the U.S. Forest Service new authorities to improve the condition of America’s forests. For example, we now have expanded stewardship contracting authority for up to 20 years. We really need market solutions to treat the many acres of small-diameter trees that need to be removed to improve forest health, and this 20-year contracting authority will help to attract the needed investments in biomass and smallwood processing.
We also have expanded Good Neighbor Authority with states and Tribes. Good Neighbor Authority lets the U.S. Forest Service enter into cooperative agreements or contracts with states and Tribes to improve forest conditions on both federal and nonfederal lands. Through Good Neighbor Authority, we can pool resources for forest health treatments on federal lands and adjacent lands as well as for projects related to wildlife habitat, soil and water, and data collection.
As of July 30, we had 214 good neighbor agreements on at least 83 national forests in 38 states. The agreements have identified 362 different activities. Primary emphasis areas include timber harvest, fuels reduction, and habitat improvement for wildlife and fish.
I’ll give just one example. In the state of Wisconsin, we entered into an agreement allowing the state to prepare and administer about 25 million board feet of timber sales on the Chequamegon–Nicolet National Forest each year. The state will use the proceeds to fund reforestation, habitat improvements, and other services. Similar agreements are pending in other states.
Improving Forest Conditions
Using our tools and authorities, we have improved forest conditions across the United States. In 2018, the U.S. Forest Service treated nearly 1.4 million hectares through timber sales and prescribed fire, the highest levels ever. Other federal and state agencies have treated millions of hectares more. In the 17 years from 2001 to 2017, the federal land managers together treated more than 27 million hectares. That’s an area more three times the size of Belgium.
In 2018, the U.S. Forest Service sold 3.2 billion board feet of timber—the most in 21 years. That is creating jobs through a sustainable flow of forest products. State and other federal land managers also sold large quantities of timber.
However, most timber-related jobs in the United States are in the private sector. Private forest landowners own 58 percent of the forest land in the United States—and 86 percent in the South, which has some of the most productive forest lands in the United States. Private forests generate about 90 percent of our nation’s timber.
Whether through timber sales or other means, projects to improve forest conditions boost local economies. For every $1 million spent by the U.S. Forest Service on resource management activities, we create 66 jobs and realize over $3 million in local economic benefits. That includes investing in roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, the physical link between Americans and their public lands. Our federal forest roads support activities to improve forest conditions; our roads and bridges are also critical for fire protection and emergency response.
In addition, people depend on safe forest roads to get to schools, stores, hospitals, and homes. On the National Forest System alone, over 149 million visitors use our infrastructure annually, and they contribute over $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year while supporting about 143,000 jobs, mostly in gateway and rural communities. The more we invest in active forest management and in access for visitors, the more jobs and other benefits ripple through our local economies.
Shared Stewardship
Because we are all interconnected across the landscapes we share, we need others to help us make a difference. The U.S. Forest Service is committed to working with partners and landowners to accomplish work on the nation’s forests in the spirit of shared stewardship. We believe that joining together across shared landscapes and around shared values is critical for the future of conservation.
Here’s why. The scale of our work has to match the scale of the risks and the problems we face. I’ll use an example that will be familiar from Canada as well: salmon fisheries, especially of Pacific salmon. Our salmon face risks ranging from the oceans to headwater streams—and all points in between. If we want to have salmon, we need to mitigate the risks by working with partners at the appropriate scale. We need agreements with forest managers across broad landscapes to work at the right scale of the risks to our salmon fisheries.
With respect to wildfire, we have a similar opportunity to match the scale of our work to the scale of the fire risks we face. In the past, our fuels projects were randomly scattered across landscapes. If a severe fire came, the project would usually work: the fire would drop from the canopy to the forest floor, where firefighters could control it before it burned into homes and communities. But we had no good way of assessing the full scale of the risk and placing our treatments accordingly.
Now we have tools for understanding a whole range of conditions at landscape scales. Today’s enormous fires can travel long distances to threaten homes, communities, and other values. The entire area at risk is called a fireshed, and scientists can now map entire firesheds, including all the federal, state, private, and other landownerships that collectively make up an individual fireshed. We can map the contribution to fire risk from each parcel of land, and we can use that information to forecast what might happen if we put various kinds of treatments here or there.
We can use the same approach for other kinds of threats, like invasive species. Through planning at the right scale based on the outcomes we agree on for shared landscapes, we can place treatments of any kind in a cost-effective way to achieve shared goals.
We propose to apply our new capacities through shared stewardship, with the states taking the lead. The states will convene partners to set broad priorities across shared landscapes for the outcomes we all want. Then we will come to agreements with communities and stakeholders on the right tools to use at the right time in the right places at the right scale.
The stars are aligned. All fifty-two states in our nation have forest action plans. The plans can serve to coordinate fuels and forest health treatments across planning areas that span jurisdictional boundaries. The states are uniquely positioned to convene stakeholders across firesheds to evaluate the wildland fire environment, to agree on cross-jurisdictional planning areas, to use tools to assess alternatives for managing fire risk, and to set priorities for investments that will bring the highest returns.
The Forest Service has already signed shared stewardship agreements with the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and others. More agreements are on the way.
U.S. Forest Service Role
As the United States prepares for shared stewardship, the U.S. Forest Service is committed to playing a central role. Our purpose is to support all life by sustaining the nation’s forests and grasslands, and we do that by being good neighbors and by bringing partners and stakeholders together around common goals. We can deliver the science, technology, and land management experience to support shared stewardship. Through shared stewardship … by connecting people to their natural resources … we can promote the social, economic, and ecological vitality of our landscapes and communities for generations to come.