Why It Matters: Longer wildfire seasons, more frequent and intense wildfires, and other forest health stressors increasingly threaten forests, fish and wildlife habitat, and communities. Between 1990 and 2020, the Wildland-Urban Interface increased by 31%. Accelerating the pace and scale of forest restoration through the policy reforms in the Fix Our Forests Act would be a significant step towards reducing wildfire risk for communities and improving forest health, wildlife habitat, and access for sportsmen and women on federal lands.
Highlights:
- More than 117 million acres of federal lands are at high or very high risk of wildfire, threatening fish and wildlife habitat, watersheds, communities, and access for sportsmen and women.
- In 2024, nearly 65,000 wildfires burned more than 8.9 million acres, exceeding the 10-year average for the number of wildfires (62,307) and acres burned (7.0 million). While roughly one-third of wildfires in 2024 occurred on federal public lands, more than half of the acreage burned by wildfires occurred on U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Indian Affairs lands.
- The bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act would modernize federal forest management policies to mitigate severe wildfire risk by increasing forest resiliency through science-based forest management. CSF strongly supports actively managing forests, including through prescribed fire, to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health and wildlife habitat.
On December 5, 2025, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) submitted a letter to Senate leadership from a coalition of 45 organizations representing forest industry, state forestry agencies, sportsmen and women, and other conservation organizations, which encouraged them to schedule floor time for the Fix Our Forests Act (S. 1462).
The letter stressed the importance of modernizing federal forest and wildfire management policies, including fixing the 2015 Cottonwood decision that has stymied forest health improvement projects for a decade, expanding collaborative tools, streamlining processes, and promoting cross-boundary management and coordination among federal agencies and other state, Tribal, and local governments. The Fix Our Forests Act would expand the Good Neighbor Authority, reform litigation against forest management projects, increase the acreage of several National Environmental Policy Act categorical exclusions to facilitate the implementation of more forest restoration projects to reduce hazardous fuel loads and increase forest resiliency to severe wildfires, and more.
The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee advanced the legislation on an 18-5 vote on October 21, 2025. Earlier in the year, the House passed its version of the Fix Our Forests Act (H.R. 471) on a 279-141 vote. The House and Senate versions of the legislation were led by bipartisan sponsors, Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus (CSC) Co-Chair Chairman Westerman and Congressman Peters, and CSC Senators Curtis, Hickenlooper, Padilla, and Sheehy. The vote counts that both versions of the bill received demonstrate strong bipartisan support for passing the legislation.
CSF commends the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee for advancing the Fix Our Forests Act and is thankful to the sponsors of both versions of the legislation for their leadership addressing this critical issue for sportsmen and women, forest industry, and communities across the country in the Wildland-Urban Interface. CSF is hopeful that the Senate will bring the Fix Our Forests Act to the floor soon.
