More than $70 million is headed to communities across the Mountain West to help reduce wildfire risks.
The U.S. Forest Service Community Wildfire Defense grants target areas called the wildland-urban interface, where people live near forests. The number of these areas has grown as more people move to the mountains, said Cody Tully, fuels program manager at the Wyoming State Forestry Division.
“But with that comes increased risk from wildfires,” he said.
That’s the case in the Bighorn Basin in Park County, Wyo., near Yellowstone National Park, an area that received a grant. Not only are insect and disease outbreaks increasing in the area’s forests, but there’s also been an influx of new structures and communities, according to Tully.
The $138,500 grant will pay for updates to Park County’s Community Wildlife Protection Plan, which is nearly two decades old, and help the county decide which projects to prioritize to reduce risk.
“Ultimately to work towards landscape risk reduction from wildfires, and not only to people's homes and their infrastructure, but large public level infrastructure like radio towers, cell phone towers, water supply, but also reducing risk to ecological change in the forest,” Tully said.
These grants are a carryover from the Biden administration and were highly competitive. The U.S. Forest Service received 573 applications. It gave out 58 grants. As an example of how competitive the process was, Wyoming submitted four applications, according to Tully, and one was selected.
A spokesperson for the Forest Service said it used three priorities to identify communities most in need.
“These priorities included communities impacted by severe disaster, high or very high wildfire hazard potential, or are low income,” the spokesperson said via email. “The agency then worked with application reviewers made up of state and tribal partners to evaluate and rank the quality and effectiveness of the proposals. ”
Wyoming, with its small population, got relatively few dollars compared to other states in the region. Arizona, Montana and Utah will get hundreds of thousands of dollars, while Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico will get millions for various projects.
*The New Mexico total includes $3,265,040 of funding for the tribal community Pueblo of Cochiti.
Many communities are taking the first step to reduce wildfire risk, like Park County, Wyo., and updating their community fire plans. Others are taking the next step and using their grants to implement those plans.
This is the third round of funding. The U.S. Forest Service said it will announce another round later this year.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
