Senate Democrats have asked Senate leadership to fund recovery from wildfires on federal lands.
The senators, including Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, asked that any new emergency disaster appropriations bills include funding resources to help national parks and forests to recover from wildfire. Such lands are not covered by FEMA, leaving the cost to clean up and restore the lands to the federal agencies.
"As you know, unlike wildfire response activities on state, tribal, or private lands which are coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), wildfire response on federal land is managed by the land agencies themselves. In the past, Congress has appropriated the funds our public land agencies require for their critical response, remediation, and mitigation activities," they wrote.
Nearly 1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management terrain burned in the American West this year. In Arizona, the Dragon Bravo and White Sage fires devastated about 200,000 acres of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim and the Kaibab National Forest.
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A common farming device could become a critical solution in Salt River Project's wildfire mitigation efforts.
