The Biden administration allotted an additional $500 million to its initiative to reduce wildfire losses in high-risk landscapes, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday. With the new funding, $2.4 billion has been poured into the work.
“As climate change exacerbates the challenges our communities, forests, and infrastructure face from catastrophic wildfires, our answer to those challenges [has] to match the scale of the threat,” said Vilsack in a statement.
The USDA said nearly $400 million was allocated to 21 priority landscapes identified in the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, launched in 2022. The remaining $100 million will go to the new Collaborative Wildfire Loss Reduction Program, which targets high-risk areas outside of the 21 priority landscapes where homes and communities abut national forests and grasslands.
More information about the 10-year wildfire strategy is available here.