U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper, John Curtis, Alex Padilla, and Tim Sheehy introduced the Fix Our Forests Act, bipartisan legislation to combat growing catastrophic wildfires across Colorado and the United States. The bill works to strengthen wildfire resilience by improving forest management, supporting fire-safe communities, and streamlining approvals for projects that protect communities and ecosystems from extreme wildfires.
The comprehensive bill reflects months of bipartisan negotiations to find consensus on how to accelerate forest management projects, promote safe and responsible prescribed fire treatments, expand public input in assessments of wildfire resilience needs, and enhance collaboration between federal agencies, states, tribes, and stakeholders.
“The growing wildfire crisis threatens our Colorado communities,” said Hickenlooper. “We need to act NOW with the speed required to mitigate wildfires and make our homes and businesses more resilient to these disasters, and to put in place protections for our communities and the environment.”
“As increasingly frequent and catastrophic wildfires in California make clear, we need durable solutions to confront the growing impacts of the wildfire crisis,” Padilla said. “This bill represents a strong, bipartisan step forward, not just in reducing wildfire risk in and around our national forests, but in protecting urban areas and our efforts to reduce climate emissions. It prioritizes building fire-resilient communities, accelerating the removal of hazardous fuels, and strengthening coordination across federal, state, and Tribal agencies, including through the creation of the first-ever National Wildfire Intelligence Center. I look forward to continuing to advance forward-thinking, practical solutions to protect our communities from devastating wildfires—and that includes pushing for sustained funding and staffing for our federal land management agencies to ensure they have the tools to get this critical work done.”
“Better stewarding our forests is something we can all agree on, regardless of party, because it helps secure a stronger economy, more resilient, healthy forests, and safer communities,” Sheehy said. The West has long been prone to wildfires, but climate change, prolonged drought, and the buildup of dry fuels have increasingly intensified these fires and extended fire seasons. Wildfires today are more catastrophic – growing larger, spreading faster, and burning more land than ever before.
Colorado has seen four of the five largest fires in our state’s history since 2018. The 2021 Marshall fire was Colorado’s most destructive on record, burning over 1,000 homes. The Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires in 2020 together burned more than 400,000 acres, the two largest fires in the state’s history. Nationwide, total acres burned rose from 2.7 million in 2023 to nearly 9 million in 2024, a 231% increase.
Forest health challenges are also increasing in frequency and severity due to climate stressors like drought and fire, and biological threats like invasive species – all of which the West is particularly vulnerable to.