Oregon Public Broadcasting

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced  Monday it plans to move away from using forest maintenance money to fight fires -- and the stimulus package will help it do that.

Of that, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says $98 million is going to the U.S. Forest Service.

Central Oregon correspondent Ethan Lindsey reports.

The federal government owns more than half the land in Oregon. That includes 15 million acres of forest land.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack oversees the U.S. Forest Service.  He says the stimulus spending represents a fundamental shift in federal forest management policies and spending.

Tom Vilsack: “We’ve had these fires that have become extraordinarily intense because there’s a lot of fuel. And there’s a lot of fuel because we’ve taken money from the maintenance budget and using it to fight fires. So we’ve got to stop that practice. And essentially, what we’re doing with the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is the first step in that process.”

Close to a billion dollars in total from the stimulus package will be spent by the forest service. That money will go to jobs for young people to manage and thin the forests.

It will also be spent on research and testing of woody biofuels -- and carbon sequestration.