Wyoming State Forester urges funding, compact reform and expanded Good Neighbor Authority at Senate hearing

Kelly Norris, Wyoming State Forester and a member of the National Association of State Foresters, told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that state agencies must be central to implementing recommendations from the wildfire mitigation and management commission.

"This is about teamwork and being accessible for each other in our response," Norris said, describing recommendation 47, which calls for modernizing regional and state‑to‑state forest fire compacts so resources can be mobilized more efficiently and federal suppression costs reduced.

Norris also emphasized the need to shore up the firefighting workforce. "The utilization of the state fire assistance and volunteer fire assistance programs are essential to maintaining and building wildland mitigation and management capacity," she said, summarizing recommendation 55 and urging sustained funding for those programs.

She cited the March 1 Happy Jack fire west of Cheyenne as an example of why local and state capacity matters. Norris said the fire ran roughly eight miles into the city and "threatened hundreds of homes, F.E. Warren Air Force Base, and a significantly historic arboretum," and that local, county and state responders relied on state fire assistance and volunteer programs to stop the blaze.

Norris urged a cross‑boundary approach to mitigation. Referring to recommendations 24 and 25, she said "wildfire risk doesn't stop at fence lines and neither should mitigation funding," and called for treating high‑risk landscapes in and around communities holistically regardless of ownership.

On federal partnerships, Norris noted the U.S. Forest Service's goal of treating 30,000,000 acres of non‑national forest lands and argued that increasing flexibility for federal funds to move across boundaries would help states and partners meet that target. She also welcomed Congress's recent expansion of the Good Neighbor Authority to the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (recommendation 26) and cited Wyoming House Bill 43, which doubled Good Neighbor Authority positions in Wyoming to increase management capacity.

Norris warned of possible tension between some national initiatives and wildfire priorities, saying Wyoming and other states are "very concerned at how the national level old growth initiative could contradict the U.S. Forest Service's wildfire crisis strategy," and urging that wildfire crisis response remain a top priority because, she said, wildfire is the leading cause of old‑growth forest loss.

She concluded by calling for state involvement in implementing the commission's recommendations and for active fuels management across all ownerships as a critical step to reduce wildfire risk and associated costs.

The hearing proceeded after the testimony; no formal votes or motions were recorded in the transcript excerpt provided.