[from the text] Our steering committee is dedicated to advancing federal policy to support wider use of prescribed fire and wildfire managed for resource benefits. Both these uses of fire are essential tools for fuel reduction, community protection, and the restoration of fire-adapted forest ecosystems. Herein, we use the phrase “wildfire managed for resource benefits” (or “managed wildfire” for short) to mean intentionally using naturally ignited fires to achieve resource management objectives under appropriate conditions (Berger et al., 2018). We recognize that all fires are managed to some extent but use this shorthand in this report.

There is ongoing congressional and agency emphasis on designing “outcome-based” performance measures to track the implementation and efficacy of fuels reduction and forest restoration treatments. The recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) directs billions of additional funds over the next five years to fuel reduction and forest restoration treatments in the wildland-urban interface and in high-priority watersheds (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 2021, Sec. 40803). The law provides $250 million to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) specifically for prescribed fire (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 2021, Sec. 40803); the Department of the Interior also received the same amount for the same purpose.

To support and inform this process, in May 2022 we hosted a two-day, hybrid virtual/in-person workshop in Portland, Oregon, to discuss needs and opportunities to improve outcomes-based performance measurement. Our general aim was to understand which current and potential options for performance measures could capture effective federal fuel reduction outcomes and restoration projects across the West, keeping in mind the importance of prescribed fire and managed wildfire. We sought to identify options for using or supplementing existing measures, discussed further below, and to identify other innovative, potential outcomes-based performance measurement approaches.