Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program Reauthorization Act of 2025
The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program Reauthorization Act of 2025 would reauthorize and expand the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLR), originally created in the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. The bill broadens the scope of CFLR activities beyond protecting tree species to also address forest pathogens, requires standardized monitoring, and ensures federal staffing support for the collaboratives that plan and implement landscape-scale forest restoration. It also authorizes new, innovative ways to implement projects (such as conservation finance and Good Neighbor agreements) and expands focus areas to reduce wildfire risk across land ownerships (including at the wildland-urban interface) and to improve watershed health and drinking water supplies. The bill increases program capacity and funding and extends the program through 2034, while also broadening governance and conflict-resolution provisions. In short, the bill aims to keep CFLR active longer, scale up its reach, modernize how projects are monitored and managed, broaden allowed tools and align restoration with wildfire risk reduction and water quality goals.
Key Points
- 1Expands scope to include forest pathogens in addition to species considerations; broadening the ecological threats CFLR can address.
- 2Requires standardized monitoring questions and indicators to evaluate project performance across CFLR efforts.
- 3Adds a Federal Government staffing plan to provide ongoing support to CFLR collaboratives established under the program.
- 4Enables innovative implementation mechanisms, including conservation finance agreements and Good Neighbor agreements, and other similar approaches.
- 5Expands restoration focus to reduce uncharacteristic wildfire risk and increase ecological restoration across ownership boundaries (federal, state, Tribal, and private lands) and within the wildland-urban interface; also emphasizes watershed health and drinking water source protection.
- 6Increases program caps and capacity: the eligible or permitted level for certain components rises (e.g., from 10 to 20 for one element, and from 2 to 4 for another), indicating greater project or participant capacity.
- 7Strengthens governance aspects by adding conflict resolution or collaborative governance provisions.
- 8Funds and timeline: lifts the program’s annual funding amount from $4,000,000 to $8,000,000 and extends the program’s applicability/deadline from 2023 to 2034.