Restoration Hampered by limited budget.

• Position: Forest Fires

The U.S. Forest Service has increased the pace and scale of forest restoration by nine percent since 2011, according to a report released by the Department of Agriculture. This progress comes in the face of mounting challenges to the agency, including record droughts, longer wildfire seasons, and the increasing percentage of the budget spent fighting wildland fires.

Despite the gains, at least 65,000,000 National Forest System acres still are in need of restoration work. The rising cost of wildfire suppression, as fires have become more intense and more expensive to fight in recent years, has taken funding away from restoration, watershed, and wildlife programs. With a record 52% of the Forest Service's budget dedicated to fighting wildfire in 2015, com pared to 16% in 1995, the ability to do more restoration work within the current budget structure severely is constrained.

"The magnitude of the crisis demands that we cannot go another year without a solution to the Forest Service's broken fire budget," says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. "There is broad agreement that we need to fix the way we pay for wildfires. We have provided Congress with a straightforward solution to enable us...