Issue Papers

Federal Restoration Funding

The Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition promotes the following national priorities for the federal land management agencies:

1. Investing in the restoration and stewardship of public and private lands,
2. Building the capacity of rural communities and businesses to perform land management, and 
3. Using and creating markets for the products resulting from those actions.
   

Federal investment in an “all lands” approach to restoration and stewardship should create jobs and sustainable communities in rural America. Implementing strategic and integrated investment, improved federal procurement procedures, and better performance measurement can successfully transform our landscapes to healthy, productive conditions that will mitigate for and adapt to climate change, protect water quality and quantity, provide wildlife habitat and other biodiversity values, contribute to clean energy technology, protect communities from the impacts of uncharacteristically severe wildfire and contribute to rural economic sustainability.

To learn more read our FY 2011 Appropriations Issue Paper.
Also read our FY 2010 Appropriations Issue Paper.

Performance Measures

Federal land management agencies are beginning to use performance measures as a way to gauge agency progress toward goals, as a basis for funding allocations, and to provide accountability to the Administration, Congress, and the public. The RVCC is concerned that current measures are insufficient to assess federal agency progress towards inclusive and integrated land management priorities; specifically related to collaboration and capacity building in public lands communities.

To learn more read our Performance Measures Issue Paper and recent update.

Multiparty Monitoring

Multiparty monitoring helps policy makers, land managers and citizens understand the impacts of federal land management activities.  RVCC has developed a number of recommendations on how to support and implement successful monitoring efforts which can be found in our Multiparty Monitoring Issue Paper.

Wildland Fire Suppression Budget Reform

The U.S. government needs a new way to pay for federal wildland fire suppression. Escalating suppression costs are having a devastating impact on the land management agencies, particularly the Forest Service (USFS). Fire management costs for the USFS have exceeded $1 billion six of the last eight years. The proportion of the USFS budget devoted to fire increased steadily from 13% of the total budget in 1991 to 48% in the FY09 President’s request. These rising costs have resulted in a 35% reduction in funding for non-fire programs and USFS staffing has been reduced by 5900 positions during the same period. In addition, when suppression funding is exhausted, the agencies borrow funds from other programs, disrupting ongoing projects.  In past years, Congress passed supplemental spending bills to repay these transfers, but these bills are often passed after projects have been delayed or eliminated, and full repayment is never certain.

RVCC Key Recommendations:

1. Establish a flexible spending account for emergency wildfire suppression. Authorizing legislation should include appropriate requirements for use, cost containment controls and incentives, and accountability measures.
2. Restore funding for comprehensive restoration and long term stewardship of federal lands.
3. Enhance funding for community fire assistance programs.

To learn more read the Wildland Fire Suppression Budget Reform Issue Paper.

Also, read our transition proposal for a new administration and congress entitled “A Rural Agenda for Stewardship of Natural Resources in the American West”.

Working Groups

The Budget and Appropriations task group is an ad-hoc group primarily comprised of working group chairs, though others are encouraged to participate.  This group will not have monthly conference calls throughout the whole year, but rather will work intensively around the introduction of the President’s budget and the appropriations cycle.  The task group promotes an integrated approach to forest management that directs investments to rural communities to stimulate local economies and builds capacity for long-term public lands stewardship. It also provides insight and ideas regarding how federal agencies can include measurements relevant to rural forest dependent communities and workers in their performance measures, which they use to monitor agency effectiveness.

The task group functions as a resource for all of the RVCC working groups, providing support with legislative comments and research, media strategy, and sign-on letters. Specifically, the group focuses on increasing investment and new authorities needed to promote restoration, rural conservation-based economic development, farm bill, access to work and supply on public lands, collaborative partnerships, wildfire policy, and related legislative and appropriations proposals.

Each year, the group responds to the Administration's budget proposal by producing a comprehensive Community-based Restoration Funding Package.

Chairs: Maia Enzer, Sustainable Northwest, Wendy Gerlitz, Sustainable Northwest.

The Public Lands Stewardship working group strives to improve relevant agencies’ planning processes and budget structures to achieve objectives of landscape scale restoration, hazardous fuels reduction, and wildfire management.  It also seeks to encourage collaboration and establish the roles of ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, and thinning as they relate to the creation of green jobs and effective landscape scale stewardship on public lands.

Chairs: Lynn Jungwirth, Watershed Research & Training Center; Wendy Gerlitz and Maia Enzer, Sustainable Northwest

To learn more read the 2010 draft Public Lands Stewardship plank.

Learn more about past efforts of the working group.