Forest Service resumes prescribed fire program, but some fear new rules will delay projects
The Forest Service’s prescribed fire program is back in action, and some believe it could be delayed if new rules are not approved by Congress this fall. Photo:
The Forest Service’s prescribed fire program is back in action, and some believe it could be delayed by new rules to be drafted next month.
Under the so-called “comply or explain” rule, established in 2012 after Congress passed the 2013 Farm Bill, the department has the authority to fire back under certain circumstances with the goal of improving vegetation management. The department’s two-year pilot program is not open for the public as it involves burning the agency’s landholdings.
For now, the agency has been burning over 4,000 acres burned in the past two years on its National Forests, and it expects to add an additional 2,000 acres to that in the next round of burns.
But under the proposed rule published by the Forest Service’s National Forests.
The proposed regulation is not a final rule, and the agency is asking for public comment before it decides how much acreage will be burned and under what conditions.
The plan to delay prescribed burns
When the 2012 farm bill mandated the Forest Service to develop a prescribed burn program, the agency was already in the middle of a two-year burn in Montana with some success when the rule was issued.
In the past two years, the agency has successfully burned more than 3,000 acres on its national forests. The Forest Service is now using only the old discretionary burns that the department had in the 1990s, and in a way, the agency even reversed course.
Under the agency’s burn rules, public lands burned for prescribed reasons were required to be set aside until May 2021 and the department could fire back on landholdings
