Directs the State Department of Agriculture to establish a wildfire risk and impact reduction initiative program that awards grants to eligible local stakeholders.

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83rd OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2025 Regular Session
House Bill 3123
Sponsored by Representative OWENS (Presession filed.)
SUMMARY
The following summary is not prepared by the sponsors of the measure and is not a part of the body thereof subject
to consideration by the Legislative Assembly. It is an editor’s brief statement of the essential features of the
measure as introduced. The statement includes a measure digest written in compliance with applicable readability
standards.
Digest: The Act tells ODA to start a program to give grants to help reduce the risk and impact
of wildfires in rangeland areas of the state. (Flesch Readability Score: 69.8).
Directs the State Department of Agriculture to establish a wildfire risk and impact reduction
initiative program that awards grants to eligible local stakeholders.
A BILL FOR AN ACT
Relating to wildfire.
Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon:
SECTION 1.
(1) The State Department of Agriculture shall establish a wildfire risk and
impact reduction initiative program to award grants to local stakeholders in order to reduce
the potential for and the impact of megafires in Oregon rangelands through strategic man-
agement investments and the program’s framework and strategy of wildfire impact reduction
plans.
(2) The program must employ an approach that uses a decision support framework and
science-based strategy that includes federal and state agencies and nongovernmental
stakeholders with a focus on local landowners. The approach must:
(a) Focus on wildfire prevention and suppression and restoration from wildfire impacts;
(b) Provide strategic prefire planning to defend and grow areas of healthy, fire-resilient
rangelands; and
(c) Work to restore and rehabilitate burned rangelands building from anchors of areas
that were highly resistant to invasive annual grasses prior to fire and are likely to have re-
tained that resistance.
(3) The program must award grants to local stakeholders to support them in applying the
approach described in subsection (2) of this section at management-relevant scales and con-
ducting proactive and strategic landscape management.
(4) In establishing the program described in this section, the department may consult
with Oregon State University, appropriate federal agencies, research centers, organizations
focused on addressing challenges at landscape scales and other experts in wildfire.
(5) The department may establish by rule grant eligibility criteria for local stakeholders.
(6) As used in this section, “megafire” means a fire that burns more than 100,000 acres.
SECTION 2.
There is appropriated to the State Department of Agriculture, for the
biennium beginning July 1, 2025, out of the General Fund, the amount of $500,000 for the
purpose of carrying out the provisions of section 1 of this 2025 Act.
NOTE: Matter in boldfaced type in an amended section is new; matter [ italic and bracketed] is existing law to be omitted.
New sections are in boldfaced type.
LC 2633