Hill Heat

The purpose of the hearing is to examine the President’s budget request for the U.S. Forest Service for Fiscal Year 2023.

• Randy Moore, Chief, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

The FY 2023 President’s Budget for the USDA Forest Service discretionary appropriations totals $9 billion, including $2.21 billion for the wildfire suppression cap adjustment (in the Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve Fund). In addition to discretionary appropriations, the request includes $743 million in mandatory funding for Permanent and Trust funds. To address the wildfire crisis we are facing, the FY 2023 request focuses on risk-based wildland fire management; compensation for wildland firefighters; tackling the climate crisis; improving infrastructure, providing economic relief and supporting jobs; and advancing racial equity. To improve the conditions we are seeing on the ground, it will take use of the best available science; hard work shoulder to shoulder with partners; use of all the tools in our toolbox; and a robust workforce.

Climate change is causing historic droughts in the West and placing water supplies and other natural resources at risk. Carbon sequestration is vital for combating climate change. Forests take up vast quantities of carbon in trees and soils—in fact, forests are America’s largest terrestrial carbon sink. Our forests, plus harvested wood products and urban forests, offset almost 15 percent of the Nation’s total carbon dioxide emissions and almost 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. The National Forest System alone stores almost 14 billion metric tons of carbon, or about a quarter of the Nation’s carbon storage in forests. Each year, the National Forest System adds about 31 million metric tons of carbon of net gain.

Many ecosystems nationwide are degrading and losing habitat for our native plants and wildlife. Climate change is altering environmental conditions nationwide. Drought has contributed to outbreaks of insects and disease that have killed tens of millions of acres of forest across the West. Changing environmental conditions have lengthened fire seasons into fire years and worsened wildfires across the West. At the same time our forests are becoming more overgrown and unhealthy. Expanding development into the wildland urban interface puts more homes into fire-prone landscapes. One American home in three is now in the wildland/urban interface, increasing wildfire risk to these communities, because 80-90 percent of all wildfires are human-caused.