USFS Opens Forest Landscape Restoration Website
We reported three days ago [here] that Title IV - Forest Landscape Restoration of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 has finally been funded by Congress, to the enormous tune of $10 million (the Act called for $40 million per year). Considering that they spend $2 billion a year on wildfires, and $trillions in God knows what, $10 mil is pretty paltry, but it’s a small step in the right direction.
The US Forest Service has now set up a website for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program [here].
Congress, under Title IV of Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (PDF, 40 KB), established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program.
The purpose of the CFLR Program is to encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack articulated his vision for America’s Forests in a speech given in Seattle in August 2009. The Secretary underscored the overriding importance of forest restoration by calling for “complete commitment to restoration”. In this same speech, the Secretary highlighted the need for pursuing an “all lands approach to forest restoration” and called for close coordination with other landowners to encourage collaborative solutions through landscape-scale operations. The CFLR Program provides a means to achieve these aims and to also:
* encourage ecological, economic, and social sustainability;
* leverage local resources with national and private resources;
* facilitate the reduction of wildfire management costs, including through reestablishing natural fire regimes and reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire;
* demonstrate the degree to which various ecological restoration techniques achieve ecological and watershed health objectives; and,
* encourage utilization of forest restoration by-products to offset treatment costs, to benefit local rural economies, to and improve forest health.
