Oregon Wildfire Prevention Fund

Oregon has experienced increasingly severe wildfire seasons, with the 2020 Labor Day fires being among the most destructive in state history. These fires burned over 1 million acres, destroyed more than 4,000 homes, caused 11 deaths, and forced tens of thousands of Oregonians to evacuate. Climate change and forest management practices have contributed to this trend, with average annual area burned increasing by approximately 500% since the 1970s. Oregon's forests, which cover nearly half of the state's land area, have undergone significant changes over the past century. Fire suppression policies dating back to the early 1900s have interrupted natural fire cycles, leading to dense, overgrown forests with high fuel loads. Meanwhile, residential development has expanded into the wildland-urban interface, placing more communities at risk. The state's 2019 Governor's Council on Wildfire Response identified a $4 billion need for forest restoration and community protection measures over the next 20 years. The 2021 Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 762, a comprehensive wildfire package that began addressing these needs, but funding remains insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge. Traditional ecological knowledge from Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes offers valuable insights for fire management, as Indigenous peoples used controlled burns to maintain healthy forest ecosystems for thousands of years before European settlement. This proposal seeks to build on these diverse approaches while addressing the urgent need for coordinated, science-based wildfire prevention strategies in an era of climate change.