Locally Led Restoration Act of 2025
Locally Led Restoration Act of 2025 would broaden participation in federal forest restoration work and tighten some requirements around how wildfire hazard fuel reduction projects are proposed and carried out. The bill expands third-party involvement in stewardship contracting to include entities beyond traditional private contractors, imposes a new salvage requirement (minimum 10% salvage), and establishes annual notice and response processes, environmental review timelines, and a set of contracting safeguards (best-value, land-use protections). It also raises the timber-sale advertising threshold from $10,000 to $55,000 and requires annual inflation-indexed adjustments. Finally, the bill would create a Comptroller General report within five years to track proposals, contracts, and acres treated. Overall, the measure aims to increase locally led restoration efforts and salvage-oriented management, while adding procedural transparency and oversight to stewardship contracting and timber sale practices on federal lands.
Key Points
- 1Expanded third-party participation and salvage requirement
- 2- Allows stewardship contracting proposals from private entities as well as other public or private entities (not just traditional “private entities”).
- 3- Adds a salvage requirement: any stewardship contracting project must include vegetation removal with at least 10% of the vegetation proposed to be removed classified as salvage (salvage covers wildfire kill, beetle kill, and dead or dying material).
- 4Proposal process, responses, and accountability
- 5- Agencies must publicly notice annually the opportunity to submit stewardship contracting proposals.
- 6- For private/public proposals, the Chief and Director must respond within 120 days; denial responses can explain factors and possible actions to address issues.
- 7- The bill clarifies that agencies are not obliged to enter into a contract simply because a proposal was submitted.
- 8Environmental review and project selection
- 9- After a proposal is submitted, agencies may issue public notice of initiation of any necessary environmental review within 120 days.
- 10- Following environmental review, an agreement or contract may be entered if appropriate.
- 11- In cases of conflicting proposals, the Chief and Director have sole discretion over which proposals, if any, are accepted.
- 12- Contracts must be on a best-value basis, and may not occur on lands in the National Wilderness Preservation System or inside inventoried roadless areas; must be consistent with the forest plan or land and resource management plan.
- 13Threshold for advertised timber sales
- 14- The statute’s timber-sale advertising threshold is increased from $10,000 to $55,000.
- 15- Beginning the first year after enactment, the threshold will be annually adjusted for changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- 16Oversight and reporting
- 17- The Comptroller General must, within five years of enactment, report to Congress on: (a) the number of project proposals received by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, (b) the number of contracts/agreements entered, and (c) the number of acres treated under these contracts.