This Act updates rules for awarding third-party contracts for wildfire fuel removal projects and adjusts the minimum dollar threshold for publicly advertising national forest timber sales to account for inflation.
Doug LaMalfa
Representative
CA-1
The Locally Led Restoration Act of 2025 aims to streamline the process for third-party contractors to remove hazardous fuels from forests to prevent wildfires, emphasizing salvage requirements in those projects. Additionally, the bill updates the minimum dollar threshold for publicly advertising timber sales in national forests to account for inflation, raising it from $10,000 to $55,000. This new threshold will be automatically adjusted annually based on the Consumer Price Index moving forward. The Act also mandates a report to Congress five years after enactment detailing the outcomes of these new contracting procedures.
Wildfire Bill Raises Timber Sale Advertising Threshold to $55K, Cutting Transparency for Smaller Logging Deals
The “Locally Led Restoration Act of 2025” is essentially a policy tune-up for federal land managers, focusing on how they contract out wildfire prevention and sell timber. It’s aimed at making the process more efficient, but it also makes a big change to transparency that people need to know about. This bill has two main parts: one for fighting fire risk, and one for changing how the Forest Service sells wood.
Clearing the Brush: New Rules for Fire Prevention Contracts
Section 2 aims to speed up the removal of hazardous fuel—that’s dead trees, brush, and other stuff that turns into rocket fuel during a wildfire—by giving private companies and other outside groups a clearer path to propose projects. Currently, getting a contract to clear federal land can be a bureaucratic slog. Under this bill, if a private entity proposes a fuel removal project, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) must respond within 120 days. This is a huge deal for efficiency, setting a mandatory clock for agencies that often move at a glacial pace.
There’s a catch, though: any contract awarded must ensure that at least 10% of the material removed is “salvage.” Salvage means dead stuff, like trees killed by beetles or fire. This provision is designed to keep the focus on removing genuine fire hazards rather than just cutting down healthy trees. For small logging companies or local conservation groups, this means they get faster feedback, but they have to make sure their proposal is heavily weighted toward clearing out the actual dangers. The bill is clear that these projects can’t happen in protected areas like wilderness or roadless areas, ensuring they align with existing land use plans.
The $55,000 Question: Less Oversight for Timber Sales
Section 3 is where the rubber meets the road for public transparency. Currently, the Forest Service must publicly advertise any timber sale valued over $10,000. The bill argues this number is wildly outdated due to inflation. So, they’re striking the old figure and replacing it with $55,000. This means that any timber sale under $55,000 no longer requires mandatory public advertising.
For the busy person, what does this actually mean? It means the Forest Service can now sell significantly more timber—five times the previous limit—without the mandatory public notice that allows local communities, watchdog groups, and environmental advocates to scrutinize the sale. While the stated goal is administrative efficiency—making it easier to process small sales—the practical effect is a reduction in transparency for a larger chunk of resource extraction. If you live near a national forest and care about how the land is managed, this raises the bar for when you’ll automatically hear about logging activity. The good news is that the bill mandates that the $55,000 threshold will be automatically adjusted every year based on the Consumer Price Index, so Congress won't have to revisit this issue again just to account for inflation.