Sense of Congress

It is the sense of Congress that— (1) wildfire management is a complex, multijurisdictional issue that requires an integration of efforts at all levels of society, including the Federal Government, State, Tribal, and local governments, and the private sector; and (2) the report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission entitled On FIRE: The Report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission and dated September 2023 represents a consensus set of recommendations from 50 diverse experts to improve the outcomes from wildfire in the United States, finding that— (A) rapidly changing ecosystems represent fundamental shifts in conditions that existing fire behavior models and existing fire management system are not designed to meet; (B) research, applied science programs, data management, and technology procurement and application relating to wildfire are housed within a wide array of Federal entities and academia, leading to a limited ability to set priorities and general inefficiencies; (C) various predictive services and decision-support functions exist to aid Federal managers and decisionmakers in the wildland fire community that, due to the different missions and jurisdictions of the Federal agencies involved and the fact that the services reside in several different Federal agencies, would benefit from improved interoperability and more coordinated priority setting and purchasing power; and (D) an interagency joint office should be established— (i) with membership from entities conducting research and addressing wildland fire management; (ii) with dedicated and separate funding to fulfill the mission of comprehensive assessment and prediction of fire in the wildland and built environment interface through data aggregation and science-based decision-support services; and (iii) in close collaboration with the existing wildland fire management system in the United States.