Washington, DC — The National Wildlife Federation welcomed the U.S. Forest Service’s recently unveiled strategy to reduce wildfire risks to people, wildlife and communities. The agency’s plan builds off the work of a bipartisan group of lawmakers supported by the National Wildlife Federation to provide sufficient funding starting in 2020 for proactive national forest restoration and forest management.

“The Department of Agriculture’s new Shared Stewardship strategy for managing forest fires fueled by climate change is a strong start to putting new forest fire money and policies provided by Congress to good use,” said Mike Leahy, National Wildlife Federation Senior Manager for Public Lands. “We will ultimately assess the strategy based on its impact on forests, people and wildlife, but we appreciate that the Forest Service is starting out by reaching out to the public and key stakeholders, rather than attacking and ignoring those it disagrees with. The support for this strategy shown today from Republican Senators Murkowski and Daines, and Democrat Senators Cantwell and Wyden — all leaders on forest policy — show that the best path for making progress on restoring our forests continues to be a bipartisan one.”