The Western Governors’ Association has begun a new initiative to tackle wildfires by managing for healthy forests.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, WGA chairman, said the West faces a growing need for additional capacity, both intellectual capacity and physical infrastructure, to responsibly manage natural resources.

WGA’s Working Lands/Working Communities initiative will expand relationships between western communities, federal and state partners and local and tribal governments to manage land and resources, he said.

“The goal is to develop bipartisan strategies to support local communities seeking to improve cross-boundary management of lands, mitigate wildfire risks and restore ecosystems,” he said.

One challenge is to expand market support for active management of western working lands, he said.

“A good example is examining potential markets for the relatively low-value timber and biomass that needs to be removed to reduce the threat of uncharacteristic wildfire,” he said.

The initiative highlights one of the most important lessons in land management, said Sonya Germann, Montana state forester.

“The best and most durable solutions are those that are locally driven — ones that galvanize and support local leadership, encourage collaboration, promote local industries and workforce capacity and provide markets for the goods we derive from achieving our collective management goals,” she said.

Lesli Allison, executive director of Western Landowners Alliance, said there are many great examples across the West of successful public-private partnerships and locally led conservation.

“We can build on these models, but scaling up will require political will and investment,” she said.

Tom Schultz, director of resources and government affairs for Idaho Forest Group, said Idaho has identified more than 6 million acres threatened by wildfires due to insects and disease, and that number is more than 80 million acres nationwide.

“So through Shared Stewardship and Good Neighbor Authority, we have the opportunity to address some of these risks,” he said.

“We know the threat is out there, and active management is one of the key tools that we have to address and mitigate those threats,” he said.

While there have been successes, there are also plenty of challenges.

“The will is there, the getting it done is very, very difficult. We simply don’t have the resources to meet the scale of the need,” Germann said.

The processes and authorities are helpful tools. But there are still barriers to knitting those things together and making them work on a large landscape-style basis, she said.

“So I think it’s going to take resources, policy push … but I think the will is there and the timing is right,” she said.

There’s been too much war between working lands and the environment, and there’s a need to work together more cooperatively, Allison said.

“I think finding the political will to come together on common ground and find those solutions and deepen mutual understanding and trust is imperative if we’re going to be successful,” she said.

Shultz said there needs to be a priority focus on treating forests and the agreements that need to be put in place to get it done.

“If we don’t manage these forests, fire’s going to manage them for us — and we don’t want that,” he said.