From prescribed fire to watershed protection: what the Fix Our Forests Act does for hunters and anglers

America’s forests are burning at a pace and scale that should give every hunter and angler pause. According to the National Interagency Fire Center’s May 2026 National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook, as of April 30, 1,848,210 acres had burned across the country – 194% above average. Nearly 62% of the U.S. is now in drought, with conditions persisting, intensifying, or developing across much of the western U.S., High Plains, and Southeast. Looking ahead, NIFC projects above normal significant fire potential through the summer across an unusually broad geographic footprint: the Northwest, northern Great Basin, northern California, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountain Front Range, and much of the southern Gulf coast.  

But fire itself is not the enemy. Much of the American West and South is naturally fire-adapted, with forests and grasslands that evolved alongside frequent low – to moderate-intensity fire, which historically reduced excess vegetation, recycled nutrients, maintained some of the most productive wildlife habitat in the country. The crisis isn’t that forests burn. It’s that a century of widespread fire suppression, changing land management practices, expanding development, invasive species, and a changing climate have left many of those same forests choked with unnatural, dense fuel loads – turning a natural process into some of the catastrophic, habitat destroying wildfires we’re now seeing. 

For America’s hunters and anglers, the consequences of getting this wrong are not abstract.  They are lost seasons, degraded watersheds, and habitat that will take decades to recover. The challenge before Congress is not simply reducing fire – it is restoring healthier forests where beneficial fire can once again play its natural role while reducing catastrophic wildfires that threaten communities, fish and wildlife habitat, and outdoor recreation. 

The good news is that Congress is well on its way to passing legislation to combat this crisis. has already done much of the hard work to address this crisis. The Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA) passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier in the 119th Congress and cleared the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee by a 18-5 bipartisan vote last October. It is currently ready to be called to the Senate floor at any moment.   

The Fix Our Forests Act takes a comprehensive approach to the forest health and wildfire challenges that have been building for decades on our national forests. For hunters and anglers, the most consequential provisions are straightforward. Here are just a few: 

Accelerating on-the-ground restoration. 

For the first time in legislation, FOFA recognizes that projects to restore watersheds can reduce wildfire risk and protect drinking water sources for downstream communities. Land managers would be authorized to conduct restoration projects aimed at enhancing riparian and wet-meadow health in the newly designated “Fireshed Management Areas” under the bill. This win-win-win creates healthier habitat for fish and wildlife, more fire-resistant landscapes, and protects water supply for downstream communities.  

Expanding the use of prescribed fire. 

FOFA aims to make meaningful progress toward putting more “good fire” back on the landscape by strengthening the prescribed fire workforce, improving training and coordination among state, tribal, private, and federal practitioners, and reducing the barriers that have limited the safe use of prescribed burning. These investments would acknowledge what land managers have long understood.  

For hunters and anglers, more prescribed fire means healthier forests – stimulating new forage for elk and deer, improving habitat diversity for upland birds, and reducing the risk that future wildfires will severely damage the watersheds wild trout and salmon depend on. 

Protecting watersheds and downstream communities. 

Beyond improving watershed health in Fireshed Management Areas, FOFA would conserve and restore freshwater resources on other National Forest System Lands and nearby non-federal lands through reauthorizing the Water Source Protection Program and improving the Watershed Condition Framework. These programs identify and implement conservation and restoration efforts to improve water quality originating on U.S. Forest Service lands. Through these provisions, FOFA would expand critical public-private partnerships working to ensure that our National Forests provide clean water for communities, benefit agricultural producers, and safeguard fish and wildlife habitat that hunters and anglers rely on. 

Improving interagency coordination. 

Wildfire response today is too often hampered by fragmented data and slow coordination across the federal, state, tribal, and local agencies that share responsibility for fighting fires. FOFA addresses this by creating a national Wildfire Intelligence Center, which would generate and host real-time fire data and coordinate rapid interagency response. For hunters and anglers, faster, better-coordinated fire response means more public land stays accessible each season, and less prime fish and wildlife habitat is lost to fires that could have been contained earlier. 

Strengthening community resilience. 

FOFA would help communities become more resilient to wildfire by establishing a new interagency “Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Program” to better coordinate federal efforts to help communities prepare for, withstand, and recover from wildfires. The bill also strengthens and expands the Community Risk Reduction Program and makes improvements to existing grant programs while fostering cutting-edge research on wildfire and early detection technologies. These investments would help towns near national forests and other public lands better withstand and recover from wildfire – which matters to hunters and anglers, too: resilient gateway communities sustain the outfitters, access points, and local economies that depend on healthy public lands. 

The TRCP has long held that healthy national forests are foundational to quality hunting and fishing. Elk, mule deer, and pronghorn (and many other species) depend on the mosaic of open meadows, mixed conifer forests, and riparian corridors that characterize well-managed national forests. Trout and salmon depend on cold, clean water that forested watersheds provide. When forests are degraded, the hunting and fishing opportunities that millions of Americans enjoy suffers alongside them. 

The Fix Our Forests Act does not solve every challenge facing our national forests. The bill must be accompanied by adequate resources and agency capacity to put its tools to work. Legislation alone cannot substitute for a well-funded, well-staffed agency workforce – but the bill aims to lay critical groundwork that could meaningfully reduce the risk of catastrophic, landscape scale fires that have become increasingly common. 

Momentum for meaningful forest and wildfire policy has been building for years. The bipartisan support behind the Fix Our Forests Act – alongside backing from Western governors, state foresters, fire chiefs, conservation organizations, and other stakeholders – reflects a broad consensus that the status quo is no longer acceptable. While these groups may not agree on every aspect of forest management, they agree that the growing wildfire crisis demands action. Congress has an opportunity to build on that momentum and deliver lasting, science-based solutions before another fire season is upon us. 

TRCP urges the Senate to pass the Fix Our Forests Act before the close of the current legislative session. Every fire season that passes without action increases the risk of uncharacteristic wildfires that can devastate watersheds, fragment wildlife habitat, and cause long term closures on public lands that hunters and anglers have depended on for generations. The forests that make those days afield possible are counting on Congress to act. 

A path forward is in sight. It’s time to move.