Working with the Forest Service

The USFS faces significant challenges that impede forest management and wildfire prevention efforts.  Over the past 15 years, the funding for hazardous fuels reduction has not matched the rising costs of wildfire management, making it difficult for the USFS to prioritize and complete essential fire mitigation work. This funding shortfall, coupled with unpredictable federal budget approvals, has led to delayed project initiation and completion, hampering proactive fire prevention measures.  

Staffing issues compound these problems. The USFS struggles with hiring and retaining qualified personnel due to low pay rates and the seasonal nature of many firefighting jobs. This high attrition rate among experienced staff weakens the agency’s capacity to respond effectively to wildfires and carry out forest management tasks. 

Aside from workforce capacity hurdles, there are additional complex contracting processes that presently limit the ability of partners (“Implementing Entities”) to assist the USFS.  Combined with the inability of federal agencies to act beyond the current-year budgets approved by Congress, the USFS is frequently challenged with being able to enter into long-term offtake agreements that support new wood product facility development.

In 2023, CLERE published a report solicited by the northeastern pilot region examining workforce solutions for biomass removal from US Forest Service lands in North East California.  Given the continued reliance on nonprofit and collaborative partners to provide specialized services on National Forest System lands, understanding under-used ways the Forest Service can increase workforce capacity is vital to achieving forest health goals. 

CLERE Inc. examined two key federal hiring authorities: Direct-Hire Authorities (DHA) and the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility Program. Because DHAs are regularly employed, the following summarizes the IPA program

IPA Mobility Program is designed to facilitate temporary assignments of personnel between federal government agencies and various non-federal entities such as state and local governments, colleges and universities, tribal governments, and federally funded research and development centers. Following the revision of the Act, federal agencies themselves now certify the eligibility of non-federal organizations for personnel exchange partnerships, with such certifications becoming permanent and applicable across the Federal Government. The IPA program enables federal agencies to bring top scientists, researchers, and professors from universities and other entities into federal service to lead complex and highly technical projects and address emerging issues, providing temporary access to specialized expertise that may be difficult to recruit through traditional hiring processes. Federal agencies could directly utilize the IPA program or work with facilitating organizations such as the Partnership for Public Service, which operates an IPA Talent program, to streamline the swift exchange of key personnel. 

By leveraging innovative personnel exchange mechanisms alongside continued reliance on specialized nonprofit and collaborative partners, federal land management agencies could address workforce shortages and build capacity in implementing large-scale forest management and restoration projects. 

There are a variety of stewardship contracting tools available to partners when working on National Forest System Lands.  Tools such as Good Neighbor Authorities (GNA) and Master Stewardship Agreements (MSA) have a shelf life of 10 to 20 years, respectively.  As such, when thinking of long-term feedstock contracts (10+ years), it is common to look at these agreements with federal partners as a good faith step towards securing feedstock supply.  

However, under this program, and across multiple National Forest supervisor offices, the 3rd party partners who most frequently are awarded these types of agreements are unable to make a feedstock commitment over the life of the agreement. This is because the GNA and MSA both do not directly inform the quantity of material coming off of the National Forest, so project partners still have no ability to guarantee feedstock delivery for a new facility.  More tangible contracting tools include: timber sales, stewardship contracts, and supplemental project areas (SPAs) which are tiered under MSAs as a type of harvest plan.

There is rising interest in pursuing increased use of the GNAs in California for advancing management of federal lands, especially given the success of its use by partners in Oregon and Washington. At this time, GNA is only eligible to be used by states, counties, and tribes, making it harder to use in certain areas of the state with low-capacity county and tribal governments. However, there are ongoing efforts to include Resource Conservation Districts (and “special districts”) as an eligible GNA entity through the federal Fix our Forests Act, which should help make its use more widespread and accessible for local entities throughout the state. One additional caveat is that local Forest leadership must be willing to enter into such an agreement, and many Forests throughout the Pilot Project regions struggle with high staff turnover rates and limited continuity in leadership/directive goals.