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The Biden-Harris Administration in March submitted to Congress the President’s Budget for fiscal year 2023. In April and May, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland discussed the budget request with Congress as it begins to prepare appropriation legislation.
The 2023 Budget proposes a significant increase for the Interior Department’s Wildland Fire Management Program. It will expand the number of firefighters and their compensation and allow Interior to better address the effects of climate change and the impacts of wildfires on public health, communities, and natural and cultural resources.
The President’s Budget request for Interior’s Wildland Fire Management Program in 2023 represents a $174 million increase over our enacted 2022 funding level. It will expand Interior’s wildland fire management by:
- Modernizing the wildland fire workforce.
- Reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires through collaboration and applied science.
- Suppressing harmful wildfires.
- Increasing climate resiliency by managing vegetation the fuels fires and rehabilitating burned
- Supporting a better understanding of the effects of climate change on wildfires.
The President’s 2023 Budget request, coupled with the historic $1.5 billion in additional funding over five years provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, positions the Interior Department to successfully respond to our new environment of more frequent and extreme wildfires.
Learn more in the March 28 announcement…
The U.S. Department of Labor last month announced changes by its Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) to assist federal firefighters with certain occupational illnesses by making it easier for claimants to file certain claims and improving transparency in how claims are processed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that cancer is a leading cause of death among firefighters, and research suggests firefighters are at increased risk of certain types of cancers compared to the general population. Each year, OWCP receives approximately 2,600 workers’ compensation claims from federal firefighters. Of those, about 175 claims include conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and lung disease.
To implement the policy changes, OWCP has created a special claims unit to process federal firefighters’ claims. The unit consists of existing staff specifically trained to handle these claims. The agency is also providing comprehensive training to the unit’s examiners on the impacts of the policy changes and working with federal agencies—including the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Homeland Security, and Interior—to explain the changes in policy and procedures.
Learn more in the April 20 announcement…
Climate change continues to drive the devastating intersection of extreme heat, drought, and wildland fire danger across the United States, creating wildfires that move with a speed and intensity previously unseen.
President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $1.5 billion to the Department of the Interior’s Wildland Fire Management Program to address wildfire risk and prepare communities and ecosystems against the threat of wildfire by making historic investments in forest restoration, hazardous fuel management, and post-wildfire restoration. In April, the Department released a roadmap for achieving these objectives in coordination with federal, non-federal, and Tribal partners.
Through the historic investments provided in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these plans will facilitate a collaborative, multijurisdictional approach to reducing wildfire risk over broad landscapes. This will reduce the trajectory of wildfire risk to communities and natural resources.
Interior’s Five-Year Plan emphasizes fire prone Interior and Tribal lands, including rangelands and other vegetative ecosystems that pose serious fire risks. Approximately 7.1 million acres of land administered by the Interior Department have been identified as having a very high or high likelihood of exposure to wildfires.
Learn more in the April 4 announcement…
The Interior Department’s Medical Standards Program helps to ensure wildland fire personnel with arduous duties are medically qualified to perform their tasks safely. This includes completing medical qualification exams.
Many firefighters complete their exams on an individual basis, but those in remote locations often lack access to a clinic. Earlier this year, the Medical Standards Program hosted four mobile clinics at remote duty stations where firefighters cannot be provided access to a regular clinic within a reasonable distance.
The clinics for the 2022 season were located in Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas. They benefited fire personnel such as those in the Pacific Islands who were able to complete their exams on the Big Island of Hawaii and a firefighting crew staffed by Mexican nationals, Los Diablos, hired by the National Park Service to fight wildfires and conduct controlled burns along the international border.
In all, nearly 150 remote firefighters received their medical qualification exams through these events so they are prepared for their critical work this fire season.
Rapidly advancing modern technology helps the wildland fire community gather information about wildfires and get it into the right hands at the right time. The Wildfire Fire Information and Technology Program, jointly managed by the Interior and Agriculture departments, was established in 2011 to provide the technology fire managers need to do their jobs, regardless of their agency affiliation or location.
This spring, the WFIT Data Management Program worked with the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) Data Management Committee to host a Wildland Fire Data Summit in Boise. Interest among the wildland fire technology community was high with over 80 participants in the week-long event.
Throughout the week, there were lively discussions covering a variety of topics, such as data management as the volume and velocity of data continue to grow, data interoperability, cataloguing and standardizing data services, training opportunities to support a data literate community, improving communication, and updates on a wide range of wildland fire applications.
The semi-annual Wildland Fire Data Summits are a critical part of our data management and IT coordination efforts. The community will meet again in the fall to continue its work to provide solutions for the wildland fire community.
Globally in 2021, wildfires produced a record amount of emissions in multiple countries, including the U.S., where millions more people are now affected by air pollution from wildfires. Smoke can impact human health, from short-term irritation to severe disorders and even premature death, and it can impact people who are hundreds of miles from the fire.
As wildfire smoke emissions have increased around the country in recent years, some populations are at greater risk. Initial efforts of the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, the Department of the Interior, and other federal agencies to identify populations most affected by wildfire smoke show that the primary factors influencing the level of smoke exposure include:
- The ability to evacuate from the smoke-affected area,
- Job mobility,
- Availability and use of air conditioning, and
- Access to high-performance air filtration systems.
These factors are all dependent on income level. That means wildfire emissions can impact some communities and demographic groups more than others.
Federal agencies are striving to enhance communication and improve mitigation across agencies, land ownership, and diverse populations. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is furthering these efforts by committing to invest some of the historic new funding for wildland fire management in communities that have too often been left behind.
However, there are steps every household can take to become smoke ready. Learn how by visiting AirNow.gov, an interagency website hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
Learn more in a two-part series on our blog:
Those living in the “sagebrush sea” in the western United States know how important sagebrush habitat is to hundreds of treasured fish and wildlife species, including sage-grouse, elk, and Lahontan cutthroat trout. This iconic landscape—and others like it across the nation—could be forever changed because of invasive species and wildfire.
The nation’s communities, natural landscapes, and cultural resources face a dual threat posed by the combination of invasive species and wildfire. What is the connection between these two threats? Invasive plants such as cheatgrass, buffelgrass, and salt cedar can fuel wildfires, accelerate their spread, and increase the likelihood of unusually severe wildfires.
The cycle is perpetuated by wildfires, which provide a blank canvas for non-native species to invade or even re-invade. Often, invasive plants have an advantage over native vegetation as they can get an early foothold after a wildfire. For example, in the first 20 years after a wildfire, cheatgrass can increase by two to five times as much as in unburned areas.
To address these issues, the Interior Department’s Office of Wildland Fire, Office of Policy Analysis, and bureaus are working with other federal agencies through a joint Wildland Fire Leadership Council and National Invasive Species Council initiative. Their goal? To reduce the probability of harm to communities, landscapes, and cultural resources from these dual threats. Learn more on our blog…
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