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.
โBut with that comes increased risk from wildfires,โ he said. Thatโs 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 areaโs forests, but thereโs also been an influx of new structures and communities, according to Tully.
The $138,500 grant will pay for updates to Park Countyโs Community Wildlife Protection Plan, which is nearly two decades old, and help the county decide which projects to prioritize to reduce risk. โUltimately 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,โ 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. โThese priorities included communities impacted by severe disaster, high or very high wildfire hazard potential, or are low income,โ the spokesperson said via email. โThe agency then worked with application reviewers made up of state and tribal partners to evaluate and rank the quality and effectiveness of the proposals.โฏโ
