US triples reforestation spending for wildfire devastation

Funding for reforestation by the US Forest Service has soared to more than $100 million this year as part of moves to plant more than a billion trees in a decade under President Joe’s infrastructure program Biden, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a statement. .

Wildfires in the United States are now so severe that they are burning entire stands and their seeds, preventing forests from regenerating without replanting, said Randy Moore, head of the US Forest Service (USFS).

“It’s not trees coming back, it’s shrubs,” Moore said. “We have the opportunity to do something about what we have seen happen for a long time.”

The reforestation campaign is the largest in the United States since the 1930s, when billions of trees were planted under New Deal labor programs, said David Lytle, director of forest management and USDA Rangeland and Vegetation Ecology.

The US average annual area for wildfires has roughly tripled since the 1980s, when the USFS reforestation budget was capped at $30 million. Prior to this year, the agency was meeting about 6% of replanting needs, 80% of which are due to wildfires, according to USDA data.

Forest biologists say the new reforestation budget, enacted under the Infrastructure Act’s REPLANT Act, needs to increase further to address the backlog and new fires.

The USDA said it expects spending to “increase significantly” in coming years, without providing further details.

“It may take another REPLANT law or amendment that quadruples or tenfold that value so we can do it right and not do it as a catch-up game,” said Owen Burney, head of the largest nursery. of Southwestern trees in New Mexico. .

The Forest Service relies on partner farms like Burney’s to ramp up seedling production, agency officials said. USFS nurseries produce approximately 30 million seedlings per year.