HR-4302 : Still Just a Bill

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.