January 18, 2022

Wildfires have been growing in size and severity, placing homes, communities, infrastructure 

and natural resources at grave and growing risk. Climate change is causing hotter, drier and 

longer wildfire seasons. In addition, dangerous excess fuel loads have built up due to past fire 

exclusion practices and insufficient investment in risk reduction and resilience, particularly with

rapid growth of homes and structures in the wildland-urban interface. The result has been an 

extraordinary increase in catastrophic wildfires, with devastating consequences on human 

health, the economy, community well-being, and the environment.

In times of crisis, Americans have always joined together, rising to every challenge. Now as we 

face the challenge of catastrophic wildfires, the land management agencies at the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) are redoubling 

our efforts to work with partners to restore ecosystem health and resilience, vastly expanding

our collective capacity to reduce hazardous fuels, accomplish natural resource restoration, 

invest in fire-adapted communities, and address the growing need for post-fire recovery and 

reforestation, all driven by sound science and collaborative decision-making. 

As the primary Federal organizations responsible for managing the Nation’s Federal forests and 

rangelands, USDA and DOI have worked collaboratively for many years to manage our lands 

together as one landscape – especially to address catastrophic wildfire risks that recognize no 

agency boundaries. These lands include the USDA Forest Service’s National Forest System lands 

and lands administered by the four DOI land management agencies — the Bureau of Indian 

Affairs (BIA), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), 

and the National Park Service (NPS).

In particular, our agencies, in collaboration with Tribal Nation, state, local partners and nongovernmental partners, jointly prepared the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management 

Strategy which articulated our shared goals of (1) restoring fire-adapted ecosystems on a 

landscape scale; (2) building fire-adapted human communities; and (3) responding safely and 

effectively to wildland fire. In Executive Order (E.O.) 14008,“Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home 

and Abroad” President Biden challenged us to double-down on our collaborative efforts to 

make our nation more resilient in the face of ever-worsening wildfires, droughts, floods, 

extreme heat and other risks to lives and livelihoods that are exacerbated by climate change. 

In response to this imperative, the USDA is today releasing the enclosed Forest Service 10-year 

Strategy which builds on the vision and goals of the Cohesive Strategy and adds cutting-edge 
Forest Service science undertaken and developed in recent years, which will help target Federal 

resources towards areas that are the most important to protect communities at risk, based on 

historic fire behavior. 

Restoration efforts will also safeguard and enhance important ecosystem services benefits, 

such as filtering clean water, sequestering carbon, protecting old and mature forests, and 

providing wildlife habitat, all while protecting and providing a variety of other ecologic, 

economic, social, and cultural values. 

As a next step, USDA and DOI will work together to target high-risk areas for priority wildfire 

mitigation attention, including as we implement the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that 

is providing an essential down payment on many elements of this work. We are also

coordinating across the Administration through the President’s Wildfire Resilience Interagency 

Working Group (IWG), co-led by USDA, DOI and the Office of Management and Budget and 

reporting to the cabinet-level National Climate Task Force, to bring an all-of-government 

response to this challenge.

Coordination across the Federal family creates new opportunities for problem-solving and 

allows Federal agencies to work with Tribes, states, local communities, private landowners, and 

other partners to bring additional resources to the table to address wildfire risks, increase 

resilience and protect people, communities, and natural resources. Additional collaboration will 

occur through the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission established by the 

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (P.L. 117-58), co-chaired by USDA, DOI and the Federal Emergency 

Management Agency. 

Throughout all of these joint efforts, we have and will continue to prioritize a commitment to 

consultation with Tribes and will engage Tribes to incorporate tribal capacity, expertise, and 

Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge. The Tribal Homelands Initiative established in 

our recent Joint Secretarial Order No. 3403, on “Fulfilling the Trust Responsibility to Indian 

Tribes in the Stewardship of Federal Lands and Waters,” related MOUs and direction from 

President Biden will guide our work. 

We are committed to ensuring that equity and inclusion of historically underserved 

communities is embedded in this work, including through implementing the principles and 

direction set forth by E.O. 13985, “On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved 

Communities Through the Federal Government” and efforts related to Justice40.

We must act decisively to improve the health and resilience of our forests and rangelands and 

protect people and communities at risk. Through collaborative efforts and by working with 

Tribes, States, local communities, private and family landowners, and public and private sector 

partners across jurisdictional boundaries, we can restore fire-adapted ecosystems across 

shared landscapes and meaningfully change the trajectory of wildfire risk to people, 

communities, and natural resources. 
We look forward to working together and with our partners to implement this important work.

Deb Haaland Thomas J. Vilsack

Secretary of the Interior Secretary of Agriculture