FOREST SERVICE: Budget boosts funding for monuments, restoration
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
E&E News: Tuesday, February 3, 2015
President Obama yesterday unveiled a proposed $4.94 billion fiscal 2016 Forest Service budget that includes funding boosts for national monuments, logging and landscape restoration.
The budget request, a slight drop from the $5.07 billion in current Forest Service funding, also proposes fighting some wildfires using disaster funds, a proposal Obama included in last year's budget but failed to push through Congress.
"The budget again proposes a new approach to wildland fire suppression," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement. "It will treat severe wildfires like other natural disasters that can draw on emergency funding, rather than raiding other critical programs, like forest restoration and management, research and other activities that help manage our forests and reduce future catastrophic wildfire."
It remains to be seen whether the wildfire proposal will pass muster in Congress. Like last Congress, it carries strong bipartisan support but has powerful foes in House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
The Forest Service budget would dedicate $8 million of its proposed $342 million capital improvement and maintenance account to improve infrastructure at its eight national monuments, particularly the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in Southern California that Obama designated last October.
"Maintenance on the national monuments will include improved interpretive resources, increased trash removal, trail maintenance, updated facilities, and better connections through trails and public transportation facilities between communities and the monuments," said an Agriculture Department budget summary.
The federal investments would add to the $3.5 million that philanthropic groups had pledged as of last October to restore, beautify and improve community access to the Angeles National Forest where the San Gabriel monument is located. The budget drew praise from conservationists.
"I'm very excited to see the Forest Service follow through on its commitment to improve infrastructure and recreation at its recently established national monuments," said Ryan Bidwell of the Conservation Lands Foundation, which lobbied for San Gabriel protections. "The enhanced federal funding is a great match for the private donations."
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), whose district includes much of the 350,000-acre monument, warned last October that protecting the land is only half the battle. Funding would be needed to address trash and graffiti, upgrade trails and install appropriate signage, she said.
The Forest Service said its budget would also allow it to increase timber sold in 2016 to 3.2 billion board feet, a 10 percent increase from the timber sold in 2015. The budget would also provide $60 million for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, a boost from current funding of roughly $40 million, the program's maximum authorized amount.
The budget requests nearly $360 million for hazardous fuels removal to reduce wildfire risks, which is about level with current funding.
As with previous budget requests, hazardous fuels work in the backcountry -- outside the wildland-urban interface -- would be performed as part of the proposed $822 million Integrated Resource Restoration Program that would combine a handful of other forest products, roads and fisheries work.
The IRR was first proposed in fiscal 2011. Congress in past years has funded it on a pilot scale in certain regions. Some appropriators have expressed concern that it removes accountability, but the Forest Service argues it allows the agency to perform more work with less taxpayer dollars.
