forest health

Washington Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz has called for the legislature to support a bill that would provide a dedicated funding source for wildfire response and forest health work.

Franz says the bill would provide $125 million every biennium to fund new firefighters and aircraft and work to upgrade existing helicopters.

Covid-related aid and police reform will be two of the major issues before the Washington legislature when it convenes next month.

But newly-reelected Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz hopes legislators will also consider dedicating more funding for wildfire and forest health projects.

Washington Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz is in Spokane building support for her proposal to create a state fund for wildfire prevention and forest health projects.

Franz toured a parcel of private land near Riverside State Park this morning [Wednesday] where crews are thinning trees and removing debris.

Today on Inland Journal, two segments about the health of forests in our region.

Later, we’ll hear part of a session from a Western Governors Association workshop conducted Tuesday in Post Falls. It focused on improving the resilience of forests in the region.

But first, this week, Washington state Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz released a plan to create a dedicated fund to pay for forest health and wildfire prevention. She proposes a surcharge on property and casualty insurance premiums. Her office estimates the increased cost for the average household will be a little more than a dollar a month and raise about $63 million a year.

Friday on the Inland Journal podcast, as temperatures slowly warm back to the seasonal norms, people can start finally to think about spring. The time for outdoor burning is still at least a few weeks away here in our area, but in southern Idaho, regulators expect to allow farmers to torch their fields as early as this week. We’ll talk with Mark Boyle, the head of the Idaho state smoke management program, about field burning.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources hopes the legislature will approve a larger budget for forest health and fire prevention.

The agency has put together its two-year budget wish list that will be presented to the governor and legislature in January.

For several days recently, the country’s eyes were glued to the wildfires burning in California as they destroyed thousands of homes and killed dozens of people. The fires ignited a national debate about the need to be more aggressive in managing forests to lower the risk of fire.

The catalysts in Washington were the wildfire seasons of 2014 and 2015. Hundreds of thousands of acres burned during hot, dry, windy summers in the eastern and central parts of the state.

President Trump went on the record last week in criticizing California officials for what he said were bad forest management practices that contributed to the horrific fires in that state.

Washington state officials say they are making a point of focusing on forest health related to wildfire prevention.

Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz says major efforts have been underway for about a year to focus on the fire threat posed to the forests of eastern Washington.

The spring floods in eastern Washington are just receding, but already wildfire season has begun. A brush fire pushed by strong winds burned nearly three thousand acres Sunday near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

This summer, crews in Washington and Idaho will work on forest restoration projects on state and federal lands. Some projects are aimed at lowering wildfire risk; others have different goals.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee yesterday (Monday) signed into law two measures of interest to people in the northeastern part of the state. One deals with preventing wildfires, the other with preventing wolves from killing livestock.

This week in Olympia, two forest health bills that we reported on two weeks ago continue to move along in the Washington legislature. What’s interesting is the public support those bills are receiving from conservation groups.

With all this water in our region right now -- one of the wettest springs ever -- the chance of a wildfire starting and gaining traction somewhere is pretty remote. But the memories of the severe wildfire seasons of 2014 and 2015 — speaking of the power of Mother Nature — are still fresh in the minds of Washington elected leaders.

Last week, Governor Jay Inslee, Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz and a few others met with landowners like Bonnie Cobb a bit west of Spokane. They wanted to see the work these folks had done to keep their homes and property safe from wildfire.