Wyoming Forests in Dire Need of Stimulus Funds

CHEYENNE, WY---Wyoming has been left out in the cold by the U.S. Forest Service as that agency allocated federal economic stimulus dollars to western states for wildland fire mitigation projects, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said June 17, 2009 in a sharply worded letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The Governor criticized the agency for allocating millions in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 based on inaccurate data and a model that he said the Forest Service is unwilling to disclose to the states.

“I have had the opportunity to review the list of projects that were selected to get wildland fire funding and this list paints an interesting but somewhat disturbing picture regarding Forest Service priorities,” he said, “even when glossed with a thick shellac of rhetoric tied to unemployment numbers and other ‘economic stimulus’ veneers.”   

Wyoming’s forests are suffering from the same pine beetle epidemic that has swept across the West. The Governor noted that other states like Colorado have already received millions in supplemental appropriations to address the impacts of beetle killed timber.  

“Forgive my pessimism, but I have my doubts that most in Washington can even find Wyoming on a map, no less understand the tremendous resource issues we face,” he wrote.

The Governor requested that Wyoming be awarded:

- $6.5 million for wildland fire mitigation and biomass development on state and private lands.  

- $20 million for capital construction and fuels mitigation projects in Wyoming’s national forests. (Of that $20 million, he requested $7.7 million to fund a collaborative watershed-based beetle mitigation and habitat enhancement project on the Medicine Bow National Forest. He asked that the remaining $12.3 million be used to fund projects that were initially submitted to regional offices.)