The federal government is committing billions of dollars toward a 10-year wildfire mitigation strategy that will include a boost to struggling forest thinning and watershed restoration programs in Arizona, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced in Phoenix on Tuesday.
The money, nearly $3 billion set aside in the bipartisan federal infrastructure bill last year, will fund provisions of a new National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy for the first five years. It will enable the agency to massively expand its current treatment of about 2 million acres a year to roughly 5 million acres a year, Vilsack said.
Drought, forest pests, climate change and past fire suppression have all conspired to create a landscape of megafires in the West, Vilsack and others said during the announcement at the Desert Botanical Garden...