I want to bring you up to date on a few things going on that I believe will continue to set the tone of what we want to accomplish. Congress just passed an omnibus bill with funding for this fiscal year, and we are preparing for FY 23 budget hearings.

You might wonder why we don’t just ask for all the funding we need to fulfill our mission. The budget process has multiple steps, starting when the president submits a detailed budget request to Congress for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1. The president’s budget request emerges from a dialogue between the federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget, and it lays out the president’s policy and budget priorities for the entire administration.

The Forest Service, as part of a big federal family, works together to figure out how to divvy up the annual pie of discretionary funds for nondefense spending for the entire federal government. The president’s budget request then goes to Congress, where the appropriations subcommittees in both chambers have a big say in how to cut up that pie. Congress holds hearings where some of us testify on behalf of the Forest Service. We talk about everything we do—about our science and about our challenges and opportunities. But in the end, we’re part of that bigger federal family budget, which we administer as one administration through congressional appropriations.

The news from the 2022 Omnibus Bill is fairly good for the Forest Service. Our total discretionary funding for fiscal year 2022 is about $5.7 billion, up from last year by $316 million. Our fire funding got an increase, and the fire funding fix from the 2018 Omnibus Bill is working, so fire no longer siphons off funds from everything else we do. We didn’t get everything we asked for, but National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Research and Development, and Capital Improvement and Maintenance all got increases, something we don’t see every year.

One administration priority is carrying out the Great American Outdoors Act through investments in recreation infrastructure, public lands access, and land and water conservation. The 2022 Omnibus contains $503 million for GAOA projects. Most funding is earmarked for restoring legacy infrastructure (roads, trails and so on), but big amounts also go toward acquiring lands to improve public access and toward conserving private forest lands under the Forest Legacy Program.

Another administration priority is confronting the wildfire crisis in the West, and Congress gave us a down payment on it through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The law adjusts pay scales for wildland firefighters to eliminate inequities and amplify incentives. It also invests about $5.5 billion in lands entrusted to our care, with the bulk of the funding designated for fuels and forest health treatments over the next 10 years. Under Brian Ferebee’s leadership, the Wildfire Risk Reduction Infrastructure Team has put together a list of landscapes for early implementation of our Wildfire Crisis Strategy in regions across the West. We are poised to begin.

As you know, safety is a core value for the Forest Service. As we continue our work throughout the remainder of this year, please make safety central to everything you. do. And thank you for all you are doing; it is noted and applauded.