Table A.3. BIA Forestry (Greenbook) appropriations for 2019 compared to 2011. Hazardous fuel reduction funding derived from Office of Wildland Fire. All dollars have been adjusted to 2019 using the Consumer Price Index. Land base is total forested acres.
BIA 2011 ($1000)
$/acre BIA 2019 ($1000)
$/acre
BIA Recurring Budget
29,453 20,127
1.60 1.09 0.13 2.49 5.31 1.07
28,666 26,925
1.49 1.40
BIA Non-Recurring Budget
BIA Special Budget
2,420
Hazardous Fuel Reduction
45,818 97,818 70,028
38,728 94,319 80,814
2.01 4.89 1.16
Total
Fire Preparedness (protected acres)
Notes: Other sources of funding that are not included are: 1. Forest Management Deductions (FMD), originally known as “Administrative Fees” are funds deducted by the BIA from tribal or allotment timber sales on the gross proceeds from the sale of forest products harvested from Indian lands. These can be spent for a wide range of forest management activities under an approved expenditure plan. 2. Natural resource funding from BIA programs outside of forestry that contribute to forestry projects. 3. Road investments funded by the Federal Highway Administration’s Federal-aid account to support the Indian Reservation Roads (IRR) program. This funding goes toward the BIA road system. It does not support construction or maintenance of resource roads, unless forest resource roads happen to coincide with BIA roads on reservations used for tribal public purposes. 4. Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) or Burned Area Rehabilitation (BAR) funding. Tribal lands are the only lands within DOI that can use BAER funding for reforestation. 5. Reserve Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) funding. 6. Contracting support overhead. 7. Other tribal contributions.
has requested in FY 2023 that hazardous fuel reduction funding be returned to the Wildland Fire Budget, this report continues to combine hazardous fuel reduction with Forestry. When the sum of all forestry components including hazardous fuel reduction are compared, there was a reduction of funding in real terms of about 4% and a funding-per-acre reduction of about 8% (Table A.3). At the same time, the number of forest-owning tribes has increased so that the smaller pie is being divided into smaller parts. Several of the tribes that have newer forestry programs are not receiving any recurring funding. And, of the 41 tribal organizations IFMAT interviewed, it was concluded from the 2019 BIA F&PA report that more than 50% were not receiving the minimum recurring funding to staff their programs
as mandated under NIFRMA Section 3110 (Tribal Forestry Programs and prescribed in 25CFR163.36). Similarly, the data from 2019 BIA F&PA suggested that over all the Category 1 and 2 reservations with tribal forestry staffs, 58% were below the minimum level of funding prescribed in 25CFR163.36. A higher percentage of compacted programs appeared underfunded compared to contracted programs (Table A.2). The changing balance between recurring and non-recurring budgets over recent years affects staff capacity, is discussed in a later section. An increasing reliance on non-recurring allocations, distributed annually, often by competitive funding allocations by regional BIA
to other funding agencies, particularly NRCS, to obtain multi-year funding. This has implications for Indian Country as other funding agencies have missions not clearly aligned with tribal forest management, so the tribes must be opportunistic and bend their programs to accommodate other agency priorities. Other BIA programs also contribute funding to Forestry which was not tracked in the F&PA assessments. These include Agriculture and Range, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and Water Resources. The total 2019 TPA for these other natural resource programs was $56.04 million. From a sample of tribes queried it was estimated between 10% and 15% of this TPA supports Forestry or about $5.6 million to $8.4 million, particularly for other resource participation in planning and monitoring.
offices, does not provide dependable funding for
multi-year tribal investments. Increasingly, tribes are turning
Task Findings and Recommendations 57
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