WASHINGTON (November 21, 2024) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is accepting applications for the Community Wildfire Defense Grant program to assist at-risk communities, including tribes and Alaska Native Corporations, with planning for and mitigating wildfire risks. Now in its third year, this competitive program is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America Agenda.
Out of the up to $200 million available, individual grants of up to $250,000 can be used to develop and update community wildfire protection plans, while individual grants of up to $10 million can be used for wildfire resilience projects that implement community wildfire protection plans. Projects must be completed within five years of the award. The number of projects selected will be determined by available funding, which is up to $200 million.
Notices of funding opportunities are available on Grants.gov. Applications will be accepted until 11:59 p.m., Eastern Standard Time on February 28, 2025. Applicants are strongly encouraged to develop proposals in consultation with state or Forest Service regional cooperative fire contacts listed in the Notices of Funding Opportunity.
About the Community Wildfire Defense Grant Program:
In the first two years of the program, the Forest Service awarded $467 million to 259 projects across 36 states, two territories and 18 tribes. These projects directly support the agency’s 10-year “Wildfire Crisis Strategy” to treat up to 20 million acres of national forests and grasslands and 30 million acres of other federal, state, tribal and private lands to reduce wildfire risk to communities, infrastructure and natural resources.
The Forest Service is working with underserved communities, tribes and community-based organizations to provide equitable access to this funding opportunity. Partners, including American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association, Coalitions and Collaboratives Inc., First Nations Development Institute, Hispanic Access Foundation, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and the Watershed Research and Training Center, are working with the Forest Service to increase awareness of this funding opportunity, help complete grant applications, comply with post-application financial and reporting requirements, and build community capacity to do this work independently in the future.
The Community Wildfire Defense Grant program prioritizes at-risk communities that are in an area identified as having high or very high wildfire hazard potential, are low-income, and/or have been impacted by a severe disaster, declared, designated or recognized by a government authority as having caused damage, loss or destruction to an extent and scale that an unusual or abnormal increase in wildfire risk or hazard potential to a community has occurred. The program also helps communities in the wildland urban interface meet the three goals of the “National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy” to maintain resilient landscapes, create fire-adapted communities, and improve wildfire response.
Applicants are strongly encouraged to view one of the two-hour applicant webinars about the grant application process. Webinar dates and information will be posted on the Community Wildfire Defense Grant webpage. Recordings will be posted once available. All webinars cover the same content; however, the webinar on Dec. 4 will be more focused on tribal applications. You can register for these webinars in advance at https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/fire/grants/cwdg.
Previous applications, including raw scores, can be viewed at cwdg.forestrygrants.org.
More information is available on the Community Wildfire Defense Grants webpage.
About the Forest Service: The USDA Forest Service has for more than 100 years brought people and communities together to answer the call of conservation. Grounded in world-class science and technology– and rooted in communities–the Forest Service connects people to nature and to each other. The Forest Service cares for shared natural resources in ways that promote lasting economic, ecological, and social vitality. The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners, and maintains the largest wildland fire and forestry research organizations in the world. The Forest Service also has either a direct or indirect role in stewardship of about 900 million forested acres within the U.S., of which over 130 million acres are urban forests where most Americans live.