USDA to restart wildfire grants, Oregon governor says
Source: Politico
02/22/2025 03:03 PM EST
The Department of Agriculture will restart some wildfire grants, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek told POLITICO on Saturday. “I heard yesterday from Secretary [Brooke] Rollins that they are restarting some,” Kotek said when asked at the National Governors Association meeting on Saturday morning about frozen community wildfire defense grants. “She’s like, ‘give us a week.’” Projects to reduce wildfire risk were put on hold around the country when the grants funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act were frozen earlier this month.
Rollins released funding for a handful of agriculture-related grants on Thursday, and a USDA press release said “additional announcements are forthcoming.” A second person familiar with Rollins’ remarks, who was granted anonymity to discuss a private conversation, confirmed that Rollins told governors she would soon be freeing up wildfire grants. A spokesperson for the USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wildfire mitigation — or making forests healthier in order to reduce the risk of a wildfire from happening — has become a key tool in addressing the increasing risk of wildfires, and has bipartisan support. In the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fire last month, President Donald Trump called for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to do better forest management.
But just a month later, the federal government froze a number of wildfire funding schemes, including the community wildfire defense grant program — which was set to distribute $1 billion over five years to projects that do things like forest thinning and brush management.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/22/usda-to-restart-wildfire-grants-oregon-governor-says-00205606
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