A federal program to restore forests after disaster has gotten too many funding requests

Filed 1h ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk

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Night Vigil

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Conrad Poirier · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The Emergency Forest Restoration Program, funded by Congress with $357 million meant to stay available until spent, has received more aid requests nationally than it can pay, the USDA confirmed. Michigan landowners whose forests were wrecked by a March 2025 ice storm across 3 million acres in 12 counties were invited to apply in May 2025, but face delays, eligibility confusion and sparse communication from federal officials.

About 600 Michigan landowners remain in the application process, and the state's own Department of Natural Resources estimates $14 million is needed just to restore the 1 million acres it manages. The Michigan Farm Service Agency says landowners may start restoration work now, but entirely at their own financial risk, since federal approval and reimbursement are not guaranteed.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Congress wrote 'until expended' into the law like that settled the matter, and then the money got expended somewhere else before Michigan's ice-damaged woods got their turn. Telling a landowner he can start fixing his own forest at his own expense, with no promise of ever being paid back, is not really an offer. It is a program announcing its own limits out loud and hoping nobody writes it down.

Source: Read the original at Grist → Scored: Night Vigil · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0