NASF continually surveys all states to determine progress in identifying communities at risk and developing Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs). This report helps provide a national snapshot of wildland fire risk, preparedness and capacity. The FY2009 data was collected through the U.S. Forest Service's National Fire Plan Operations & Reporting System (NFPORS), and reflects data accomplishments through September 30, 2009.

NASF writes to provide comments on an intergovernmental approach to developing a Cohesive Wildfire Management Strategy.

President Obama this weekend signed legislation that will bring a degree of relief to the nation's forests by helping federal agencies solve several of the top problems caused by the skyrocketing costs of wildfire suppression. The measure establishes a new approach to budgeting for costly wildfires, which continually drain the budgets of the Forest Service and Department of the Interior and lead to the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from other agency forest and land management priorities.

On Sept. 24, Senate leaders unanimously approved the creation of a separate source of funding for federal agencies to suppress large-scale wildfires via an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill. The Federal Land Assistance Management and Enhancement Fund ("FLAME" fund) is designed to alleviate funding problems caused by emergency wildland fire costs and is supported by NASF and more than 100 other industry, environmental, outdoor recreation, and forestry organizations.

I am proud to be representing the Partner Caucus on Fire Suppression Funding Solutions - a unique and diverse group of organizations dedicated to finding a new mechanism for funding emergency fire suppression activities for the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior land management agencies. We have developed two recommendations towards a solution. The first recommendation is to create a partitioned wildfire suppression account to fund emergency fires. Our second recommendation is to replace the 10-year rolling average with a more predictive and statistical modeling approach.