The Outdoor Alliance is calling on Congress to take a more aggressive approach to dealing with wildfires.
Congress needs to pass more effective policies for battling, and managing, wildfires, according to the Outdoor Alliance, which points out that nearly 24,000 miles of trails across the country have been impacted by fires over the past five years.
The U.S. Forest Service alone has spent $126 million the past two years to restore 1,029 recreation sites impacted by fires, the group said.
In a 30-page Wildfire and Outdoor Recreation in the West report just released, the nonprofit organization representing human-powered outdoor recreation interests calls for more prescribed fires to reduce fuel loads, mitigation, and greater funding for restoration work.
“Climate change and more than a century of failed fire policy have brought Western U.S. forests to a tipping point,” said Jamie Ervin, policy associate at Outdoor Alliance. “With both wildfires themselves, and the policy solutions proposed to address them, posed to have far-reaching effects on outdoor recreation, it is critical that the recreation community be an active and informed stakeholder on this issue. This starts with building an understanding of fire’s ecological role on our landscapes, its role in our culture, and what we can do to build resilience to fire in Western forests and communities.”
According to the report, "reducing wildfire risk means taking action at the national level to reduce the fuel available for wildfires — helping forests return to a more historic balance through science-based fuel treatments like ecological forest thinning, prescribed fire and managed wildfire — and also taking action at the local level through home hardening and other strategies that help Western communities build wildfire resilience. Outdoor recreation should be a key factor that land managers consider as they work to increase the pace and scale of fuel treatments across the west’s forests."
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