WASHINGTON – Today, the House of Representatives passed the Fix Our Forests Act. The bill, which Congressman David Valadao was an original co-sponsor of, is comprehensive, bipartisan legislation which restores forest health, increases resiliency to catastrophic wildfires, and protects communities by expanding environmental analyses, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration projects.

“Over 117 million acres of our nation’s forests are dangerously overgrown and fire-prone, putting lives and communities at risk,” said Congressman Valadao. “The Fix Our Forests Act takes critical steps to address the growing wildfire crisis by streamlining forest management, prioritizing prevention, and adopting new technologies to fight forest health threats. I’m proud to have joined my colleagues in passing this bill and want to thank House Natural Resources Committee Chairman, Bruce Westerman (AR-04), for his leadership on the issue.”

The Fix Our Forests Act will:

• Simplify and expedite environmental reviews to reduce costs and planning times for critical forest management projects while maintaining rigorous environmental standards.
• Makes communities more resilient to wildfire by coordinating existing grant programs and furthering new research.
• Stop frivolous litigation and endless agency consultations that delay needed forest management activities.
• Give agencies new emergency tools to restore watersheds, protect communities in the wildland-urban interface, and prevent forest conversion.
• Utilize state-of-the-art science to prioritize the treatment of forests at the highest risk of wildfires.
• Incentivize forest management projects of up to 10,000 acres to increase the pace and scale of addressing wildfire, drought, insects, and disease.
• Adopt new and innovative technologies to address forest health threats and suppress wildfires quickly and more efficiently.

Read the full bill here.

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