Fix Our Forests Act

What this does

The bill directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to designate fireshed management areas drawn from the top 20 percent of high-risk firesheds and to carry out fireshed management projects in them, including hazardous fuels reduction, fuel and fire breaks, removal of hazard and dead trees, prescribed and cultural burning, and grazing. It establishes an interagency Fireshed Center run jointly by the Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, and a public Fireshed Registry. It exempts the designation of fireshed management areas and the fireshed assessments from the National Environmental Policy Act and routes projects through existing categorical exclusions. It raises Healthy Forests Restoration Act categorical-exclusion acreage caps from 3,000 acres to 10,000 acres. It rewrites litigation rules for these projects: a court may not enjoin a covered action unless the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits and the action poses a risk of proximate and substantial environmental harm with no other remedy, and it sets a 120-day deadline to file suit. It bars reinitiating Endangered Species Act consultation on a land-management plan when a new species is listed or new information emerges. It extends good-neighbor and stewardship-contracting authorities, and creates a Wildland Fire Management Casualty Assistance Program for the next of kin of firefighters and support personnel injured or killed in the line of duty.