U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Tom Tidwell was called to testify this week in front of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies to discuss the President’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request for the agency. Chief Tidwell defended the agency’s budget request, but also acknowledged the agency needs to be doing more in order to properly manage the nation’s forests. Tidwell testified the proposed budget increase for FY16 would allow the USFS to sell an additional 3.2 billion board feet of logged timber, and perform 1.7 million acres of hazardous fuels treatments, a 10 percent increase from 2015.
The USFS’s wildfire budget was also discussed. Chief Tidwell expressed the need to adjust the way the government funds fire suppression through the agency. Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stopped short of publicly supporting the President’s proposed plan to shift suppression funds to the emergency disaster fund but did state the need to work with her colleagues to fix the problem known as “fire-borrowing.”