The U.S. Forest Service’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 focuses on these five areas: restoring resilient landscapes, building thriving communities, managing wildfires, promoting safety and building diversity and inclusiveness.
The proposed $4.9 billion budget is $130 million less than was allotted for 2015.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell explained each focus area to a Senate committee on Feb. 26.
To restore landscapes, the Forest Service plans to implement its pilot Integrated Resource Restoration program nationwide in 2016. The program, currently in three regions, sustained or restored 1.1 million acres of forest and grassland in 2014.
The Forest Service will build thriving communities around natural resources by investing in outdoor recreation and forest and grassland product cultivation.
About 40 percent of the nation’s housing units are located in fire-prone areas, according to the Forest Service. The 2016 Forest Service budget requests funding that would allow the agency to suppress 99 percent of the fires it fights, and an adjustment to the disaster funding cap to allow up to $855 million above the basic appropriation.
The Forest Service had decreased the amount of work-related annual fatalities to 1.8 per year. Its goal is to reduce that to zero in 2016 and beyond by continuing to incorporate safety into its organizational culture.
Its diversity goal is twofold: to increase diversity in its workforce and the diversity of wildlife in the 193 million acres of land managed by the agency.
“This budget will enable us to more effectively reduce fire risk, manage landscapes more holistically, and increase the resiliency of the nation’s forests and grasslands as well as the communities that border them,” Tidwell told the Senate committee.
