House subcommittee weighs Fix Our Forests Act as witnesses push faster tech adoption to prevent wildfires

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands held a hearing to review the Fix Our Forests Act and the role of emerging technologies in wildfire forecasting, detection, mitigation and response.

Why it matters: Lawmakers and witnesses said more timely deployment of cameras, satellites, drones, artificial intelligence and better data sharing could speed detection, improve decision making and reduce the costs and human toll of wildfires — but several members and witnesses warned technology must be paired with sustained staffing, funding and clearer acquisition authorities.

Chairman Tiffany opened the hearing by saying the Fix Our Forests Act would “unlock technological innovation, cut red tape, and bring private sector tools and common sense solutions into our forests,” and noted that more than 1.6 million acres had burned so far that year. Ranking Member Joe Neguse said he agreed that innovation matters but warned “technology alone, of course, is not a silver bullet” and that agencies need staff and stable budgets to use new systems effectively.

Government Accountability Office Director of Science and Technology Assessment Dr. Karen Howard told the committee that a range of technologies — satellites, aircraft, drones, cameras, sensors and machine learning — "have the potential to offer significant improvements." She also described limitations: low spatial resolution and data lags with some satellites, range and installation challenges for ground cameras, costs for aircraft, and the need for large, high‑quality datasets to train AI models. Howard told the committee that continued operational testing, data standardization and workforce training would be needed for practitioners to trust and use new tools.

Private and nonprofit witnesses outlined operational examples and pilot systems. Lisonbee Wolf, chief executive officer of Vibrant Planet, said her company’s planning platform is deployed across about 75,000,000 acres in eight states and described a post‑fire analysis of the January Altadena, California, blaze. She said, "an investment of only $9,000,000 in risk mitigation treatments ... would have slowed the fire down enough to give firefighters enough time to more safely and more effectively defend the community of Altadena," and argued targeted, parcel‑level planning could accelerate treatment timelines that today can take years.

Sean Triplett, data integration and operations lead at Earth Fire Alliance, described a satellite constellation called FIRESat and said the group had launched a prototype satellite in under 12 months; he said the full constellation would provide detection and monitoring for the entire United States every 20 minutes. Tyson Bertone Riggs of the Alliance for Wildfire Resilience, citing the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, asked Congress to create a centralized “fire environment” or fireshed center, modernize procurement, and better coordinate research so operators on the ground receive interoperable, actionable products.

San Bernardino County Fire Chief Dan Muncie told lawmakers, “We have a technology adoption problem in the fire service.” He said local governments have adopted many tools that federal agencies have not, described gaps in a common operating picture and stressed that firefighters need reliable connectivity, integrated mapping and wearable tracking to safely use technology in operations.

The hearing repeatedly returned to three practical barriers: 1) fragmentation across agencies and jurisdictions that complicates procurement and interoperability; 2) procurement and contracting rules that slow pilots and commercial adoption; and 3) uneven staffing and funding that limit the ability to operationalize early detection. Representative Bruce Westerman (chair of the full committee) and other members highlighted private‑sector success stories — including AI‑enabled cameras in Douglas County and the WatchDuty app during Los Angeles fires — as models for federal scale‑up.

Where members diverged: Some Republicans, including Representative Tom McClintock, emphasized timber harvest and active forest management to reduce hazardous fuels, arguing past environmental litigation and lost mill capacity hampered preventive treatments. Democrats, including Neguse and Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, emphasized climate drivers and warned that proposed budget cuts to federal staffing and research would undercut technology deployment and community grants. Several witnesses and members urged Congress to pair technology adoption with funding for programs such as the Community Wildfire Defense Grant program and to ensure training so field crews can rely on new systems.

Key recommendations offered to Congress and agencies at the hearing included: establishing a centralized fireshed/intelligence center to aggregate interoperable data; modernizing agency procurement to onboard private technologies faster; funding and training to make tools operational; prioritizing targeted treatments informed by geospatial modeling; and ensuring data standards and testing before large rollouts.

The subcommittee held the record open for written questions and invited additional written follow‑up from witnesses.