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.