Oregon senators urge feds to fund Columbia River Gorge fire recovery

Oregon’s U.S. senators are urging their peers on a powerful budgeting committee to send emergency funding to Oregon and other states where national lands and parks were recently burned by wildfires.

More than a million acres of federal land burned across the West this summer, including thousands of acres of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area straddling Oregon and Washington in the Rowena and Burdoin fires.

While state, tribal and private lands are eligible for disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency federal land managed by natural resource agencies are not. Officials at the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have to seek congressional help to finance recovery efforts.

In light of this, Oregon’s U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both Democrats, joined eight Democratic senators from Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, California and Nevada in writing Monday to the chairs of the Senate Appropriations Committee asking for federal funding. The letter reminded the chairs that Congress has approved similar funding in prior years.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/11/25/repub/oregon-senators-urge-feds-to-fund-columbia-river-gorge-fire-recovery/