Got a priority or idea when it comes to the work that firefighters and fire managers do, the science that informs the work, or the money and processes that pay for it all? The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission is looking for your recommendations.
The commission’s “Opportunities for Engagement” page explains the process, with eight recommendation topics already recruited and concluded.
Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission
This month marks the final stage of the engagement process as the commission and its committees work to meet a Fall 2023 timeline for a report to the U.S. Congress, as stipulated in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The legislation created the commission, which is charged with developing two reports to Congress – one on aerial firefighting released in February and another scheduled for release in Fall 2023 – to collectively develop “a comprehensive set of recommendations to address the nation’s wildfire crisis,” as noted in a Department of Interior media release.
Grassroots WIldland Firefighters shared a call for recommendations in their Stakeholder Update: “Currently the commission is taking on issues associated with OUR WORKFORCE. Such issues include recommendations related to compensation, recruitment and retention, staffing structures, and meeting the challenge of meeting workforce capacity (including support structures such as housing, health, and wellbeing).”
And they offered both encouragement and coaching: “It doesn’t matter if you have a small observation to share or a large well-researched manifesto ready for daylight. This is our time to be heard by the whole Commission. We urge you to PLEASE provide your submissions and make sure your colleagues do the same.”
The commission survey form reminds respondents to focus on issues and processes may be resolved by way of legislative process under the purview of Congress. And they too offer encouragement: “If you have multiple recommendations, please complete the form as many times as needed.”
(UPDATE February 14, 2023: To clarify — the rationale for releasing a report on Aerial Equipment first was a component of the guiding legislation that specified, in the “Duties of Commission,” that a “Report on Aerial Wildland Firefighting Equipment Strategy and Inventory Assessment” would be submitted per a prioritized schedule – an initial surplus inventory within 45 days of the commission’s first meeting, and a report to Congress 90 days after the inventory. See the statute at https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/title-two-wildfire-mitigation.pdf. Thanks to a commission member for the helpful reminder to always confirm with the guiding legislation.)
To choose aviation for the first report from the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission might be seen as harvesting the lowest hanging fruit, or cornering the largest elephant in the room. In actuality, the guiding legislation created specific timelines that prioritized fire aviation as a key and initial priority. Whatever the colloquial phrase, the Commission’s swift creation of the Aerial Equipment Strategy Report offers a challenging and potentially quite fruitful focus.
The report, released on February 13, 2023, frames the status of fire and aviation today in eight findings, which in turn aims us to 19 recommendations. Both the framing and the aiming may raise familiar notes — but in this case there is a universal urgency that reflects the accelerating fire challenge as well as the timeframe for the Commission, which has a year from their first meeting on September 14-15, 2022 to submit recommendations to Congress.
The Commission’s mandate and 50-person membership resulted from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) (https://www.whitehouse.gov/build/), which features a focused timeline and inclusion of a wide range of wildland fire experts and stakeholders – more than half representing non-federal entities (and more than 2/3rds, if you include alternates). The BIL included $8.7 billion for wildfire management under the umbrella of resilience, with the greatest proportion of funding tagged to “the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service ($3.37 billion) and the Department of the Interior ($1.46 billion) for wildfire risk reduction.”
As the report notes, the time for this strategy is overdue when considering the commission’s legislative charge to develop “a strategy for meeting aerial equipment needs through the year 2030” (a mere seven years from now) – which may be why the recommendations aim a trajectory into future decades for aviation and fire management in general.
The Commission’s first report operates within a framework that places aviation as a component of an overall strategy for a changing fire environment:
“In developing these recommendations, the Commission also sought to address several key themes: the need to develop an overarching, forward-looking aviation strategy that drives procurement, rather than letting aviation approaches become constrained by current practices; the need to invest in both technology and people to build an aviation fleet that meets long-term demand; and the need to take an inclusive approach to the range of functions aerial resources can serve and the range of entities that must be included in development of a truly national – rather than federal – aviation strategy.”
The topics, as organized by the commission, are grouped by aviation strategy, military-sharing opportunities and challenges, contracting, staffing, aviation use for beneficial fire (beyond suppression), and uncrewed aerial systems.
This first report of recommendations merits a full read – but in support of its urgency, consider this summary of Findings and Recommendations as a streamlined tally sheet for tracking the tasks ahead.
FINDING
RECOMMENDATION
Aviation Strategy
1) Fire Year
2) Aviation not sole solution
3) National strategy to define needs
R 1: Regional Standards of Cover.
R 2: Include contractor perspectives.
R 3: Consider national strategy for all ownership models of aviation.
R 4: Compare costs of Dept .of Defense (DoD), government and private aviation assets.
Contracting and Appropriations
4) Budgets favor short-term over long-term
R 5: Improve effectiveness, efficiency of contracting.
R 6: Contracts meet national strategy.
R 7: Funding for increased fire seasons.
Staffing
5) Lack of qualified personnel a bottleneck
R 8: Congressional funding for aviation training, staffing at all levels.
R 9: Explore private contractors as NWCG staff.
R 10: Explore technology to increase effectiveness, reduce staff.
Military Interoperability
R 11: Uniform training for DoD and land management for interoperability.
R 12: National aviation strategy to consider needs outside continental U.S.
R 13: Continue DoD for surge after other aviation assets utilized.
Military Surplus
6) Surplus adoption has risks, costs
7) Benefit to surplus parts
R 14: DoD surplus for all wildland fire community.
R 15: Wildland fire community to develop annual list of surplus needs.
R 16: Evaluate purpose-built or modified aircraft for wildland fire.
AerialResourcesandBeneficialFire
8) Beneficial fire use limited by aviation capacity
R 17: Aviation resources for risk mitigation, prescribed fire.
UncrewedAerialSystems
R 18: Improve UAS technology in wildland fire.
R 19: Develop national UAS strategy for wildland fire.
Topics still open for comments include …
Comments due by February 22: Science, Data, and Technology
Public Health and Infrastructure
Comments accepted March 1-22: Appropriations
Workforce
