Wildfire Resilient Communities Act
The Wildfire Resilient Communities Act would dramatically scale and mandate funding for hazardous fuels reduction on federal lands and tie that work to wildfire risk reduction goals. It creates a large, no-strings-attached (mandatory) funding stream of $30 billion, to be distributed to the national land-management agencies (NPS, Forest Service, BLM, FWS, and BIA) to perform hazardous fuels reduction projects on covered federal land. Projects must be ecologically appropriate, cost-effective, and site-specific, with priority given to areas near at-risk communities, high-value watersheds, or areas with very high wildfire hazard, and to efforts aligned with the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy goals (fire-adapted communities, resilient landscapes, safe suppression). The bill also adds funding for community wildfire defense grants, expands and retools the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) with stronger monitoring and governance requirements, and creates a County Stewardship Fund to share forest-revenue receipts with counties where federal land projects occur. Taken together, the measure aims to reduce wildfire risk, improve resilience, and strengthen cross-boundary collaboration and funding for fire management.
Key Points
- 1Mandatory funding of $30 billion for hazardous fuels reduction on federal lands, available starting October 1 after enactment and remaining available until expended; up to 10% of this funding may be used for administrative and planning costs.
- 2Project priorities and methods: fuels reduction through prescribed fire, thinning, brush removal, mastication, pruning, slash treatment, or combinations, with site-specific decisions; emphasis on locations near at-risk communities, high-value watersheds, or areas with high wildfire hazard, and alignment with cohesive fire management strategy goals.
- 3Additional funding for Community Wildfire Defense Grants: authorization to appropriate $3 billion for fiscal years 2027–2031 to support local wildfire defense and resilience efforts.
- 4Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) reauthorization and modernization: expanded monitoring questions and indicators, inclusion of a Federal staffing plan for collaborative processes, consideration of innovative implementation mechanisms (e.g., conservation finance and good-neighbor agreements), greater emphasis on cross-landownership risk reduction, watershed health, and ecological restoration; funding level increased to $100 million per year starting in 2026 and onward.
- 5County Stewardship Fund: creates a new fund in the Treasury to distribute to counties where federal land contracts were carried out; yearly deposits to the fund and annual payments to counties equal to 25% of contract-derived forest product receipts or 25% of excess receipts, whichever is greater; funds may be used by counties for any governmental purposes.