WASHINGTON — As the Biden administration doles out historic levels of wildfire mitigation funding, fights are breaking out on Capitol Hill about how to spend the money.
Lawmakers from both parties are backing measures that would speed up forest management projects that cut down on wildfire fuels, like brush and small trees, which they say leads to “megafires.” But environmentalists argue that the proposals would bypass environmental analysis and community input under the guise of wildfire mitigation and potentially open the door to excessive logging.
The flurry of legislative proposals coincides with the Biden administration releasing billions of dollars in funding for forest management and wildfire mitigation projects from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the climate and social spending package. In the latter spending legislation alone, Congress provided $1.8 billion to the Forest Service for hazardous fuel reduction projects such as thinning and brush removal, with a focus on projects that have already undergone environmental assessment. The infrastructure law provided $5 billion for wildfire management over the next five years.
