Utah

Working together across all lands to accomplish more

Utah’s Forest Action Plan aligns with Utah’s Shared Stewardship initiative and coordinates with other statewide natural resource plans as a broad strategy toward working together to accomplish more by sharing resources and using the right management tools in the right places. The Forest Action Plan is about collaboration across forest landscapes and ownerships on the full range of management activities, including plans, priorities, strategies, decision-making, project implementation, monitoring, and learning. The Forest Action Plan commits to engaging partners, stakeholders and communities in an adaptive learning process through which the Forest Action Plan will be updated and improved. In addition, the Forest Action Plan identifies strategies toward integrating FFSL’s Cooperative Forestry and Fire programs to address its two primary goals: restoring healthy forests, and reducing wildfire risks.

Protecting Communities, watersheds, and forests

The Forest Action Plan identifies five major threats to Utah’s forests that are widely recognized and reflect broad environmental, social, and economic forces in the state:

1. Declining forest health
2. Increasing wildfires
3. Climate change
4. Growth and development
5. Limited capacity for forest management

The Forest Action Plan addresses these threats through goals and strategies that encourage collaborative efforts among federal, state, and local agencies and that focus on priority issues and priority landscapes. Strategies seek to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk in forested watersheds that have a high risk of wildfire and present a significant threat to communities and water resources, as well as other natural resource values. The Forest Action Plan aligns closely with Utah’s Shared Stewardship initiative on these strategies and uses similar mapping tools to identify priority watersheds for all forest lands in Utah. With these maps, FFSL can work with federal, state and local partners across the state to develop projects in priority landscapes that restore healthy and resilient forests and protect communities, water resources, and other natural resource values.

Restoring healthy forests for healthy Utah communities

Utahns care about forests across our state, from remote wildland areas to urban and community settings. They know and appreciate the significant environmental values our forests provide, such as clean air and water, wildlife and fish habitat, biological diversity, and carbon sequestration. They also recognize the contributions of forests to our social and economic well-being through a variety of outdoor recreation opportunities and wood products. Forest Action Plan strategies focus on priority values and landscapes, particularly protecting communities and watersheds at high risk of catastrophic wildfire. More broadly, Forest Action Plan goals and strategies seek to engage partners, stakeholders, and communities in management activities to restore healthy forests and reduce wildfire risks across the state. One of the goals is to build the capacity of all partners so that we can accomplish more work together, increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration. In addition to creating healthier landscapes and watersheds, this forest restoration work would provide increased job opportunities in the forest and utilizing wood products.