The Idaho Department of Lands plans to ask the legislature to fund several new jobs and pieces of equipment for its Forest and Range Fire Protection Unit.

The annual legislative session starts Jan. 6 with Gov. Brad Little’s State of the State and budget address.

Little and the legislature in recent years have continued to invest in the fire program. Requests for the July 1 fiscal year include:

• Fire emergency support program manager: $108,700 personnel cost plus operating, one-time capital costs.

The department plays a “pivotal” role in mobilizing non-wildfire suppression resources such as structure firefighting engines, said Josh Harvey, Fire Management Bureau chief.

“IDL does not have structure protection responsibilities, but because we manage the agreements with federal agencies, we can mobilize those types of resources when requests are made through Idaho’s Office of Emergency Management,” he said.

The aviation program manager is now is responsible for this, and the aviation program is “extremely busy when requests are made to mobilize structural resources,” Harvey said. The current organization “does not have the capacity to manage both critical programs when an emergency arises.”

• Fire aviation section manager: $120,400 personnel cost plus operating, one-time capital costs. Rotor and fixed-wing aircraft, in different locations and under different rules, regulations and management strategies comprise a program with “multiple pieces that are complex in their own way,” Harvey said. “The workload and resource management is very specialized and requires constant attention.” Adding the section manager will enable “focused management of these critical assets.”

•Fire assessment program manager: $108,700 personnel cost plus operating, one-time capital costs. Forestland owners pay a fire protection assessment, which provides IDL with about half of its preparedness funding, Harvey said. Assessments are due Aug. 31, when department districts remain busy in fire season.

Forestland sales are increasing along with the state’s growth, and the position “will help to ensure that IDL districts can conduct assessment audits and keep pace” with sales, he said.

•Fire detection cameras: $458,000 split evenly between general and dedicated funds to purchase and install 15 mountaintop cameras equipped with artificial intelligence.

IDL aims to keep 95% of fires at 10 acres or smaller, and “rapid detection and response are key to achieving that goal,” Harvey said.

“We are facing long-term challenges with aerial detection platforms and there are very few lookout towers across the state,” he said.

The cameras, which notify automatically when they detect smoke or fire, are low maintenance and do not require significant personnel time, Harvey said. IDL tried them in strategic locations in the central and northern regions, and “in several instances, they notified us of fire well before the general public reported them.”

The cameras also give fire managers a firsthand look at an incident while firefighters and equipment are responding, so the managers can provide real-time information to those responders, he said. “The additional situational awareness increases our firefighters’ safety before they get to the fire area.”

•Radio communications network dispatch consolidation: $614,000.

Interagency partners consolidated facilities, so IDL must connect the Grangeville and Coeur d’Alene dispatch centers, Harvey said. Repeaters, control stations and microwave links are to be added, and “this possibly serves as an opportunity to put a redundant system in place as well.”