Active Forest Management, Wildfire Prevention and Community Protection Act

Active Forest Management, Wildfire Prevention and Community Protection Act

This bill establishes forest management, forest conservation, and wildfire prevention programs and activities.

The bill establishes

• a collaborative prescribed fire program,
• an incentive program for large, cross-boundary prescribed fires,
• a program to remove or treat bark beetle-killed or infested trees,
• the Restoration and Resilience Partnership Program, and
• Forest Reserve Revenue Areas to generate revenue for counties.

The bill also provides for, among other things

• the removal of certain trees or parts of those trees that come within 500 feet of an electric power line as hazard trees,
• the selection and implementation of landscape-scale forest restoration projects,
• removing the maximum term limits on stewardship end result contracting projects,
• study of only two alternatives (action vs. nonaction) in proposed collaborative forest management activities,
• the balancing of the long- and short-term effects of forest management activities on the affected ecosystem while considering injunctive relief,
• categorical exclusions from certain environmental requirements for specified forest management activities, and
• the expansion of the fire regime areas outside the wildland-urban interface for which a collaborative restoration project may be conducted.