National Prescribed Fire Act of 2025
The National Prescribed Fire Act of 2025 would require and encourage the federal agencies that administer land managed by the Interior Department and the Forest Service to substantially expand the use of prescribed fire. It aims to do this through flexible funding, a formal Collaborative Prescribed Fire Program to sponsor landscape-scale projects, stronger workforce and training initiatives (including Indigenous-led training centers), improved interagency coordination across federal, State, Tribal, and local partners, and enhanced outreach and education. A key goal is to acknowledge and support traditional Indigenous and cultural burning practices while expanding prescribed fire as a tool for reducing wildfire risk, restoring ecosystems, protecting high-value resources, and improving watershed health. The bill also builds in liability protections for cooperating entities and details on environmental reviews and smoke-management considerations to address public health concerns. The act would set explicit funding mechanisms and limits, require landscape-scale planning and cross-boundary collaboration, and mandate regular reporting. It would push for a steady, multi-year increase in prescribed-fire activity on federal lands (targeting a 10% annual increase in acres burned for nine years) and establish rules for prioritizing projects, evaluating proposals, and ensuring local economic benefits, collaboration, and accountability. It also seeks to expand capacity through new training centers, improved certification pathways, and better integration of non-federal practitioners into prescribed-fire operations.
Key Points
- 1Expanded funding and program structure for prescribed fire
- 2- Allows flexible use of up to 15% of Forest Service and Interior Department hazardous fuels and wildland fire management funds for prescribed-fire activities, including contracts, grants, site prep, surveys, training, outreach, and post-fire work.
- 3- Creates a Collaborative Prescribed Fire Program to select and fund landscape-scale prescribed-fire projects (typically 50,000+ acres) with strict eligibility and prioritization criteria, project reporting, and performance targets.
- 4- Caps total program funding and per-project funding, sets a 10-year maximum on each project, and requires annual and multi-year reporting to Congress if funded.
- 5Prioritized, landscape-scale planning and collaboration
- 6- Projects must follow landscape restoration strategies, involve collaboration among diverse stakeholders, minimize road-building, enhance wildlife and water quality, address invasive species, and consider smoke management and community protection.
- 7- Projects should demonstrate cost savings over time, leverage non-Federal funding, and promote local employment or training opportunities.
- 8Title II: Implementation, outreach, and workforce
- 9- Authorizes cooperative agreements or contracts with eligible entities (States, Tribes, counties, fire districts, NGOs, private entities) to plan or conduct prescribed fires on Federal lands, potentially across ownership boundaries.
- 10- Establishes dedicated prescribed-fire task forces in each Geographic Area Coordination Center region to coordinate cross-boundary work, with support from Federal staff.
- 11- Enables conversion of qualified seasonal firefighters to permanent Federal employees; creates pathways to employ formerly incarcerated individuals as prescribed-fire practitioners; and supports veterans’ crews and underutilized employees.
- 12- Promotes additional training centers, including Indigenous-led prescribed-fire and cultural-burning training centers, and updates training competencies to streamline certifications for supervisory roles.
- 13Title II: Liability and risk management
- 14- Provides liability protections and a voluntary training course to explain protections for Federal and Tribal employees and for non-Federal cooperators engaged in prescribed-fire activities under federal supervision.
- 15- Establishes guidance on contracts to extend liability protections to covered non-Federal entities and provides for reimbursement to the Treasury for any claims paid.
- 16Title II: Environmental review and air quality
- 17- Requires coordination with EPA and state/tribal air-quality agencies to support smoke management, exceptional-event demonstrations, and tools to assess and communicate smoke impacts.
- 18- Supports research to improve smoke prediction, public information, personal protection messaging, and emission-tracking systems.
- 19Title III: Reporting
- 20- Requires annual reporting of prescribed-fire accomplishments to a national planning and operations database, with cost-sharing to help states participate in standardized reporting, and periodic congressional reporting on program progress and effectiveness.
- 21Emphasis on cultural burning and tribal consultation
- 22- Acknowledges and supports long-standing cultural burning practices by Indian Tribes and Indigenous practitioners, including government-to-government consultation with Tribes in landscape-scale planning and environmental compliance.