Oregon Project To Receive Forest Health Resilience Funding

The USDA is investing more than $8 million in five new projects to reduce wildfire risk, protect water quality, and improve forest health across the nation.

The Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership Program is a collaborative effort between USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Forest Service to work across public-private boundaries and at a landscape scale.  The $8 million investment in new projects is in addition to $32 million for 24 existing three-year-long Joint Chiefs’ projects.

The five new projects include the “Hood River Wildfire and Watershed Resilience” in Oregon’s Mt. Hood National Forest, as well as projects in Alabama, Montana, North Carolina as well as Colorado and Wyoming.

We Need Our Forests Health & Productive

“Wildfires have no boundaries, and neither should prevention work,” said Tom Schultz, chief of the National Forest Service. “We need everyone at the table to deliver the kind of active management that will return our forests to health and productivity.”

“With the Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership, NRCS is implementing our Farmer-First mission with our nation’s foresters,” said NRCS Chief Aubrey J.D. Bettencourt. "Providing technical and financial assistance to private forest landowners is key to supporting locally led conservation, especially in the wildland-urban interface. This allows us to address multiple challenges in one project, such as reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, protecting clean water, and improving wildlife habitat.”

Previous Northwest Funding

This is the first time Oregon has received funding since 2017, when funds were set aside for the Salmon Highway project.  For the past three years, Idaho has received Forest Health Resilience Funding for a variety of projects.

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