WASHINGTON – The popular 4FRI forest maintenance program is back on track with a more focused, “more realistic approach” that appears to have government, industry and environmental officials in rare agreement.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture had abruptly halted negotiations on an extension of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative in September, a move that caught stakeholders by surprise. It took months, but the department announced in November that a deal had been reached to renew the program.
The change came after the Forest Service dropped plans for one large, multiyear contract for more than a half-million acres of forest and turned instead to a range of proposals that differed approaches, sizes and terms of projects going forward...