November 25, 2025 2:50 a.m. 

On Monday, Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden joined fellow western senators to urge Congress to pass additional funding to support wildfire recovery on public lands.

A joint release said in a letter to Senate Appropriation Committee Chair Susan Collins, and Vice Chair Patty Murray, the senators pressed for additional resources to help National Parks, National Forests and Bureau of Land Management lands recover from this year’s devastating wildfires. Since damage to federal lands is not covered by FEMA funding, federal land agencies are responsible for cleanup and restoration on their own.

The letter was led by U.S. Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, both Democrats from Arizona. In addition to Merkley and Wyden it was signed by six other senators.

The Senators wrote, “We write to request that any emergency disaster appropriations bills drafted this year include funding for wildfire recovery on federal lands. Repairing wildfire damage to National Parks, National Forests, and Bureau of Land Management Lands is vital for the safety and economies of the entire country”. Their letter continues, “Just as our forests and parks require restoration, so too do the surrounding counties and communities that bear the economic and infrastructure impacts of their disasters, their recovery is inseparable from that of the federal lands themselves”.

Nearly one million acres of BLM land burned across the West in 2025 alone.

The release concluded, “In the past, Congress has appropriated the funds our public land agencies require for their critical response, remediation, and mitigation activities. Ensuring that federal lands are restored after wildfires is a responsibility to our shared, national heritage”.