National Forests Are Being Replanted Post-Wildfire Thanks to the Infrastructure Bill

America’s National Forests cover 193 million acres of land that include some of our country’s most spectacular places. But these public lands are more than just scenery. Our National Forests hold over 25% of all carbon stored in U.S. forest ecosystems. These forests also collect and filter drinking water for 60 million people, provide habitat for more than 3,000 species, and offer outdoor recreation that serves 159 million visitors per year and generates $13.7 billion in economic activity. 

Just one problem. These public assets are going up in smoke as larger and larger chunks of America’s National Forests are severely burned by a new generation of megafires fueled by climate change. And burned areas that are not reforested can become a danger, the source of mudslides that devastate communities and cut off roadways. This growing crisis is why we must move more quickly to reforest after wildfire through a combination of replanting trees and helping to assist natural regeneration. 

America can take heart knowing we are doing this work across our National Forests faster and better than ever before thanks to a provision tucked in the bipartisan Infrastructure Law called the REPLANT Act and the creative, collaborative way it has been implemented by the U.S. Forest Service with its partners. For our painfully divided country, this environmental success story stands as an example of what we can do when we work together. 

To understand the urgency of these efforts, you must understand how profoundly climate change is worsening the impact of wildfire on our forests. Just consider that wildfires now burn more than three times as much land in California as just a few decades ago, and Oregon has set a new record this summer for most acres burned. But it is not only a greater extent of fire—the way climate change is drying out forests means they are also burning more intensely. Having larger and more severely burned areas means that there are fewer living trees to provide seed sources for natural recovery, and hotter fires damage soils in ways that make regrowth of trees more difficult. This phenomenon means millions more acres must now be replanted by hand to regrow trees.

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Until passage of the REPLANT Act in 2021, the U.S. Forest Service had a reforestation backlog that totaled 3.6 million acres. That is an area larger than Connecticut. Increasingly devastating fires only make it harder to restore enough land fast enough. This inability to keep up was largely due to an antiquated $30 million cap placed on the agency’s Reforestation Trust Fund when it was established by Congress in 1980. While $30 million might have been sufficient for the agency to reforest when the cap was put in place, it was not when confronted with higher costs such as for labor, seeds, and seedlings, as well as more acres needing reforestation.

Enter the bipartisan REPLANT Act. This landmark legislation, led by U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D. Mich.) and Rob Portman (R. Ohio) and U.S. Representatives Mike Simpson (R., Idaho) and Jimmy Panetta (D., Calif.), stripped the $30 million cap to give the U.S. Forest Service full access to all of the trust fund’s revenue, which is generated by collecting tariffs on wood products. Eliminating the cap equates to a fivefold increase in annual funding now available for reforestation. 

In addition to increasing funding, the REPLANT Act creates urgency with a mandate for the agency to close its reforestation backlog within a decade. It also helps modernize the agency’s approach by placing a greater priority on reforesting burned areas—the largest source of forest loss on our National Forests—and directs the agency to take into consideration “composition of tree species and resilience” which aligns with modern, climate-informed approaches to reforestation. 

The REPLANT Act has already been a smash success. In the Act’s first two years, the U.S. Forest Service reforested 360,000 acres, reducing the agency’s backlog by 10%. By the end of this third year of implementation in 2024, that accomplishment is projected to reach 15%. This rate of progress will only increase as the agency and its partners collaborate to scale up key inputs such as tree seeds, seedlings, and workforce.

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Part of REPLANT’s success comes from U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack setting new strategy and interim targets for the REPLANT effort, as well as better integration of agency data to manage the reforestation supply chain, and the development of new tools and guidance for agency silviculturists that make climate-informed tree species selection and planting techniques into agency policy. Getting the science right means we will plant forests that are more naturally resilient to future fires and more easily managed with techniques such as prescribed fire.

Beyond this, though, keystone agreements with non-profit organizations and other partners are a notable tool the U.S. Forest Service has used to achieve its remarkable new pace and scale. What is most innovative is the breadth of roles that partners have been invited to play under these agreements. My own organization, American Forests, is an example. Our REPLANT keystone agreement includes actions such as helping the agency increase on-the-ground capacity to execute reforestation, identifying innovative approaches to better incorporate climate science, and mobilizing our youth Cone Corps to increase tree seed collection so the agency will have enough of the right trees to plant. 

By inviting my organization and others in, the U.S. Forest Service has found an efficient way to rapidly expand its workforce, diversified the types of expertise it can access, and activated private matching funding that can help finance aspects of the reforestation process, like tree seed collection, where federal dollars are in short supply. This is public-private partnership at its finest and should be emulated to assure that our wins in public policy and funding get implemented with the speed and success we need.

In these times of great environmental and societal stress, we should all celebrate the bipartisan REPLANT Act and its partnership-driven implementation as a model for how we can come together to solve our greatest environmental challenges, including climate change. After decades of falling behind, now millions of acres will be brought back to life from a smoldering burn scar to a healthy National Forest. This is how we can deliver forest solutions working together as “One Nation Under Trees.”