This week, four bills from the House Committee on Natural Resources passed the U.S. House of Representatives with significant bipartisan support. Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) issued the following statement in response: 

"We're taking immediate action to pass meaningful bipartisan solutions for the American people. These four bills provide much-needed commonsense solutions that will empower tribes and counties to assist in important forest management activities, help improve our wildfire fighting capabilities, support outdoor recreation opportunities and hold our federal land management agencies accountable for the wildfire mitigation efforts they are performing. House Republicans are keeping their Commitment to America, and I'm proud of the work the House Committee on Natural Resources is doing to bring these bills to final passage. I'd like to thank my colleagues on the committee for their work on this legislation and I look forward to seeing them move quickly through the legislative process and across the finish line."

Background

H.R. 1567, the Accurately Counting Risk Elimination Solutions Act or the ACRES Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), holds federal land management agencies accountable by providing transparency in the work they are doing to reduce the amount of fuel for wildfires on our public lands and determine the effectiveness of the fuel reduction treatments.
 
H.R. 1450, the Treating Tribes and Counties as Good Neighbors Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), extends the ability to retain timber receipts from Good Neighbor Authority projects to counties and tribes for additional restoration projects.
 
H.R. 3389, the Emergency Wildfire Fighting Technology Act of 2023, introduced by U.S. Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), requires the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to conduct an evaluation with respect to the use of the container aerial firefighting system to mitigate and suppress wildfires.

H.R. 3324, introduced by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), extends the authority of the Department of Agriculture to collect and retain marina fees collected at the Shasta-Trinity National Forest through 2029.