Strengthening America’s forests through state-led stewardship and active management

By Kelly Norris

This is a lightly edited excerpt of testimony recently provided to the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources, Public Lands, Forests, and Mining Subcommittee hearing on pending legislation. 

All state forestry agencies share a common mission to conserve and protect America’s forests, and most have statutory responsibilities to provide wildland fire protection, support healthy forests, and reduce fire risk on all lands, public and private. State Foresters also partner with federal land management agencies through Shared Stewardship Agreements and tools such as the Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) to collectively manage forests and grasslands within their respective state. Through resource sharing agreements, we help suppress wildfires on federal lands and promote wildfire risk reduction through active management.

In addition to increasing active management on federal lands, as the Wildfire Prevention Act of 2025 seeks to do, active forest management is needed to reduce the fire threat on state and private lands and to ensure they continue to provide forest products, clean air and water, habitat for game and non-game species, recreational opportunities and more. 

Given their connectivity to neighboring federal lands, particularly in the West, the management of state and private lands is critical to the overall health of our nation’s forests. By delivering Forest Service state, private, and tribal forestry programs, such as State Fire Assistance, WSFD promotes responsible, active forest management and equips local governments and private landowners with the tools and knowledge to understand and mitigate wildfire risk on their property, which helps protect adjacent land and nearby communities. 

Stable funding is needed for long-term planning and ensuring taxpayer resources are maximized in executing these missions. In addition, it is also critical that federal lands are managed to ensure they do not negatively impact the health or wildfire risk of nearby state and private lands or communities.

In August 2020, the State of Wyoming and USDA committed through a Shared Stewardship Agreement to work together to restore forests and grasslands across all of Wyoming’s land ownerships. The agreement identifies shared principles and priorities for joint planning, pooling resources and continued investment in existing partnerships and collaborative programs. A key example of cross-boundary cooperation and investment can be found looking at the 2024 Elk Fire. Recorded as the largest wildfire in recent history for the Bighorn National Forest, it had the potential to be highly destructive, burning over numerous leased cabins on state trust lands. However, due to the coordinated efforts between state and federal partners, a large cross-boundary project that included timber harvesting and aspen enhancement stopped the fire on State Trust Lands, saving cabins, important wildlife habitat, grazing forage and costs associated with dozer lines, retardant drops and firefighters trying to protect this area.

With the President’s March 2025 Executive Order 14225 Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production, USDA Secretarial Memo 1078-006 and the Forest Service National Active Management Strategy, there has been renewed emphasis on the role of states in assisting with the pressing challenges facing our federal forests, namely reducing catastrophic wildfire risk and revitalizing rural economies. 

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon has responded to this administration’s recent efforts with an Executive Order, Increase of Active Forest Management in Wyoming. The order recognizes that 48 percent of Wyoming is federal land and that federal land management agencies and the state “heavily rely” on local fire cooperators to assist in fire suppression response. The order also recognizes that since 2017, GNA has served as an important tool to increase active management on Wyoming’s federal lands. It directs WSFD to increase the active forest management and fuels mitigation projects to the maximum extent practicable.

 Since 2017, WSFD has contracted 98 projects, on 19,732 federal acres, with 62 of those projects being timber sales, which have sold approximately 57 million board feet of federal timber on 12,000 acres through GNA. These projects have been completed on six national forests in the Rocky Mountain and Intermountain Regions, as well as two BLM Districts. WSFD has also partnered with the Bureau of Reclamation to implement critical fuels mitigation projects within a State Park to protect the State of Wyoming's recreation infrastructure. We look forward to the continued increase of these outputs.   

Additionally, the role of dedicated and predictable funding for WSFD to perform GNA cannot be overstated, particularly due to Wyoming’s limited timber markets. Without robust markets, the initial work accomplished through GNA generates insufficient receipts for reinvestment in further management projects across shared boundaries. Given the request for states to contribute to the Forest Service's goal of increasing timber harvest and mitigating wildfire risk, additional federal resources will be required to bolster state GNA programs and projects. It will take time to develop sustainable, self-funding markets.

Read the full testimony here.

Listen to an excerpt of the testimony here.

Kelly Norris is the Wyoming State Forester.

_{*The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EnergyPlatform.News.}