In September 2024, the Fix Our Forests Act passed the U.S. House, but wasn't passed by the Senate before the end of that Congress.
In January 2025, the Fix Our Forests Act was reintroduced and passed the House again, as H.R. 471. It's now before the Senate once more.
In September 2025, more and more leading environmental groups and Democratic Governors and Senators are endorsing the Fix Our Forests Act - a good idea whose time has come.
In October 2025, the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act passed out of a Senate committee, with most Democrats in support. It now goes to the full Senate.
You can help get this much-needed reform across the finish line. Tell the U.S. Senate to pass the Fix Our Forests Act!
Here's a reminder on what the Fix Our Forests Act is and why passing it is important!
You've probably heard about prescribed burns, the ancient Indigenous landscape management process that the U.S. government is belatedly turning to as a vital tool to protect our woodlands from climate change-supercharged wildfires. Kind of like a "vaccine for wildfires" they consist of setting a controlled small fire to thin out dead trees and small shrubs, reducing the "fuel load" to make it harder for a big wildfire to spread.
2023 saw the Forest Service conduct prescribed burns on nearly two million acres, an all-time high. And it should continue: nearly $500 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding is going to the Forest Service to empower them to take their wildfire prevention work to the next level.
But there's one big hold-up that's slowing down this vital climate resilience work. Due to the unintended consequences of the badly decided Cottonwood legal case in 2015, the Forest Service is currently constrained by a lengthy bureaucratic review process, easily hijack-able by any passing lawsuit, that can result in a wait time of up to five to seven years between proposing and starting a prescribed burn (or similar management actions like controlled thinning). There have already been several cases of a real wildfire sweeping in and devastating landscapes while the actions Forest Service wanted to do to protect that landscape were still held up in court! (It's a long story; here's a deep dive with the full details from U.S. policy Substack Slow Boring).
This is widely understood to be a suboptimal situation: Congress passed a temporary fix for this in 2018, but it has since expired. Now, a new bipartisan bill called the Fix Our Forests Act (H.R. 8790) would resolve the situation for good, clearly granting the Forest Service the authority and flexibility it needs to conduct prescribed burns. It also does lots of other helpful stuff, like setting up a "firesheds" program to designate areas for focused federal, state, tribal, and local cooperation on wildfire prevention.
"In California the eight largest wildfires on record have occurred during the last decade, and in just one year, California wildfires contributed more to climate change than the state's entire power sector.
Our bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act is a comprehensive approach to restore our forests and defend our communities from catastrophic wildfires. Our legislation meets the enormity of this challenge, gives forest managers the tools they need to conduct their work, and promotes scientifically backed land management methods that have been practiced by Native communities for centuries."
-Congressman Scott Peters (D-Calif)
"America's forests are in jeopardy. Insufficient management driven by bureaucratic red tape and frivolous litigation have turned vast swaths of our federal forests into overgrown and unhealthy tinderboxes.
The Fix Our Forests Act will revolutionize the way we manage our forests and support active and responsible management of federal lands with the best available technology and science, leaving them more resilient for generations to come."
- House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.)
Since we first reported on this in July, there's been some BIG progress. On September 24, 2024, and then again in January 2025 under a new Congress, the Fix Our Forests Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives! It now goes to the U.S. Senate (where it's already passed out of committee)! Your voice could be critical in determining whether or not it becomes law.
In a time with unprecedented White House attacks on science, conservation, and functional government agencies, it's completely understandable to distrust a policy proposal with substantial Republican support, especially one that could lead to more scary-sounding stuff like prescribed burning and controlled thinning - often just presented out of context as "more logging". But this is a long-gestating reform with widespread support among leaders from both parties in the wildfire-prone American West, a long-term bipartisan effort for better land management that could pass some generational progress for America's forests even during truly insane political times. Passing the Fix Our Forests Act now could empower the Forest Service to be better stewards of American forests for the next hundred years, replacing the fuel load buildup of 20th century forestry with Indigenous-inspired and Anthropocene-ready proactive management in the 21st.
Climate Action Now was an early supporter of this bill, which remains controversial in the environmental community, but we have some new company. Active supporters of the Fix Our Forests Act now include Democratic Senators Alex Padilla of California and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Democratic Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Jared Polis of Colorado, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, Citizens' Climate Lobby, and many, many more.
This is just a good idea that we have a chance to maybe pass during a crazy time.
We need to let the U.S. Forest Service do its job in the way that makes sense for the times: moving quickly and flexibly to protect woodlands with prescribed burns.
Tell your U.S. Senators to support the Fix Our Forests Act!