Bill speeds up forest work to fight wildfires on federal land.
H.R. 471 — Fix Our Forests Act · Filed by Bruce Westerman (R-AR) · 56 cosponsors · Introduced Jan 16, 2025 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
The bill sets up a Fireshed Center. It helps federal offices, tribes, and states work together on wildfire risk. It makes permits faster for forest work like tree removal and fuel cuts on federal and tribal land. It cuts the time people have to sue from the normal period to 120 days. It lets states and tribes do more forest work on federal land through deals.
Who it affects
People who live near forests and face wildfire threats gain faster risk work and forest fixes. Federal offices, tribes, and states get tools to plan wildfire work together. Companies that do forest work and remove trees may get permits faster.
One thing to notice
The bill skips some checks on how forest projects affect nature. It gives people much less time to sue in court.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
56 cosponsors: 38 Republicans, 17 Democrats, 1 Independents.
- Jan 16, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jan 16, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and House Committee on Agriculture · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committees on Agriculture, and…”
- Jan 23, 2025 — Passed the House · Congress.gov: “On passage Passed by the Yeas and Nays: 279 - 141 (Roll no. 25). (text: CR H321-333)”
- Mar 6, 2025 — Hearing held · Congress.gov: “Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Subcommittee on Conservation, Forestry, Natural Resources…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
113 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 184 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $107,958,626 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 9 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 100% of bills with any report.
Bruce Westerman, who sponsored the bill, received $1,184,425 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. — $54,660,000 in 3 reports
- Google Client Services LLC — $6,920,000 in 2 reports
- Edison Electric Institute — $4,248,610 in 2 reports
- American Association for Justice — $3,610,000 in 2 reports
- American Property Casualty Insurance Association — $3,540,000 in 2 reports
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- Fireshed Center — A new federal office that helps offices and towns plan wildfire risk work together.
- sue — To take a case to court to fight a government choice.
- deals — An agreement that lets private groups or states do forest work on federal land.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (50,012 characters) on Jul 10, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,938 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 25, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-05.
“Bill speeds up forest work to fight wildfires on federal land.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr471/simple Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.