One overcast week in January, Government Relations Director Andrew Condia, Research Associate Dominick Dusseau, and I found ourselves driving along the banks of the Mississippi River. Our road trip took us through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas to speak with leaders in four small towns about their climate risk. Representing Woodwell’s Just Access program, we wanted to understand what information communities most need to help their towns envision a thriving future in the face of climate change.

The small towns of the Mississippi are interconnected in the challenges they’re facing, but also in their resolve. They are looking for solutions that will help them preserve their way of life, while readying their communities for a changed future. Like patchwork squares in a quilt, our conversations in each town formed a larger pattern: America’s small towns want to adapt. They just need the resources to do so.

Wilmot, Arkansas: population 400

We arrived in Wilmot around midday and were welcomed by Mayor Carolyn Harris, her team, and a spread of baked chicken, green beans with ham, rolls, sweet tea, and her special-recipe salad.
“When I say, ‘let’s do lunch’, we do lunch,” says Harris.

Wilmot’s pink-fronted town hall sits on the old main street facing Lake Enterprise, next to faded or abandoned buildings. Main Street used to have two movie theaters, a drug store, and a grocery, all of which shuttered as the population declined. The town is surrounded by farms, and agriculture drives the economy, though not as much as it used to.

This is a pattern across the Delta. Rural towns have shrunk dramatically over the years as the small family farm became a much harder economic proposition. According to Water Operator Theodis Kitchen, a fourth-generation resident, Wilmot is at its lowest population in decades.

The four communities we visited that week are all members of the DRIVE program, an initiative at the University of Memphis that helps Delta region towns pursue economic revitalization on their own terms. Mayor Harris is envisioning a new economy for Wilmot that will attract newcomers to the town through its recreation opportunities; the natural lands around Lake Enterprise offer fishing, hunting, and camping. But the impacts of climate change could complicate that picture.

The challenge, Water Operator Apprentice Derrick Jackson points out, is pollution from surrounding farms. Industrial agriculture makes common use of pesticides and defoliant sprays, and when it rains or floods, those chemicals travel. While this is already a concern, climate change could make it worse as more extreme floods or wildfires carry harmful chemicals into new areas.

“We would like to know the risk,” says Harris.

Jackson says that kind of information will help more than just Wilmot. Climate change is a shared burden here in the Upper Delta.

“[Climate change] doesn’t just affect this town, you know,” says Jackson. “It goes all the way down [Highway] 165. Pretty much every town has the basics of what we have. So anything that we are able to find that could help us, could help the next towns over.”

Eudora, Arkansas: population 1,700

The next town over is Eudora, Arkansas, led by Mayor Tomeka Butler. Butler assumed office on March 11, 2020. The previous mayor’s assistant introduced her to the office, handed her the keys, and wished her luck.

“I’m looking around like, that’s it? There’s no manual or anything?” says Butler.

Her first day on the job was the day COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. The year that followed, Butler learned quickly that the best way to keep her people safe was to share information and ask for help. Now, she approaches Eudora’s climate challenges in a similar way, joining networks like DRIVE and the Arkansas Black Mayors Association (ABMA) to broaden Eudora’s access to resources.

“I’m not an expert, but I love surrounding myself with the people who are,” says Butler.

Technical expertise on climate adaptation can be hard to come by in towns like Eudora, whose population is largely elderly or aging.

But small towns face the same climate risks as larger municipalities—regardless of whether or not they have the resources to address them. Eudora is the warmest populated area in Arkansas, and heat stroke is a major hazard for outdoor workers during the summer. Flooding also plagues the town.

“Most of the time it doesn’t matter if it’s a little rain or a big rain, particular areas are going to flood, and sadly, these areas are mainly where the elderly people live,” says Butler. “There’s been times where it has rained and I’ve literally had to put people on standby who have boats, because that will be the only way we’ll be able to get to them.”

But Butler tends to focus more on what assets Eudora does have, rather than what they’re lacking. As she drove us through town, pointing out neighbors’ houses that were built over creeks and streets that become impassable during light rain, she told us how the town is making progress because of the networks they’re a part of. Through ABMA, Eudora is participating in a watershed revitalization project, which will help the town abate flooding with green infrastructure. Mutual aid agreements with nearby towns’ fire departments have helped with emergency response. And, with help from a local researcher, the town will be piloting a vertical agriculture system in its old school building.

Woodwell is now also part of Butler’s ever-growing expert network. She hopes information from a risk assessment will inform her plans for a growing Eudora, giving her the information she needs to not only keep her people safe but help them thrive.
“I just be concerned about the people,” says Mayor Butler.

Tunica, Mississippi: population 1,000

With a close-knit community, yearly festivals, and a cheery mural across from town hall welcoming visitors, Tunica, Mississippi resembles what Main Street Program Director Laura Withers calls a “Hallmark movie town.”  A few blocks from town hall, there is a central playground with slides and monkey bars. Right now, in the middle of a winter day, it’s pleasantly sunny. In the summer though, the combined heat and humidity make it a dangerous place to play.

“If you want to take your kids to play on the equipment, you can’t. It’s too hot to the touch. Mom cannot stand out there in the dead of summer. It’s too hot,” says Withers. “The bummer is that it’s hottest in the summertime when kids aren’t in school.”

Like much of the region, Tunica struggles with extreme heat. For Withers, whose job involves programming Tunica’s social amenities like the annual Rivergate Festival, extreme heat poses a risk to the features that make the town an inviting place to live.

“When people think about where they want to move or where they want to raise their family, at the end of the day, people want good education, nice parks, you know, quality-of-life type things,” says Withers.

Withers also handles grant-writing for Tunica. She says she’s noticed many applications now place an emphasis on infrastructural sustainability to make sure the money granted represents a long-term investment in the town’s success. Without concrete data on climate risks like flooding or extreme heat, Withers says her applications are not as competitive. For a town of Tunica’s size, grants are an important funding source for municipal projects.

“Anytime you can get the tiniest bit of a crystal ball into what you’re dealing with moving forward, whether it be climate or jobs or the school system or healthcare, whether it be good or bad, you can benefit from it,” says Withers.

Stanton, Tennessee: population 400 and growing

The longer we spent in the region, the more we saw the traditionally agricultural fabric of the Upper Delta interweaving with budding pockets of renewable energy infrastructure.

The uniformity of fallow fields was broken here and there by a towering range of wind turbines or bright rows of solar panels. As we pulled into the town of Stanton, Tennessee, about 50 miles northeast of Memphis, we passed BlueOval City—a 4,000-acre Ford manufacturing facility. The plant was originally established to be a center for electric vehicle manufacturing, but the company has since pulled back those promises, opting instead for “higher-return opportunities” in response to regulatory changes. Ford now plans to manufacture gas-powered trucks there as well as batteries.

Despite the pullback, the plant will still generate a massive influx of people—with some estimates up to 10,000—and accompanying development. Mayor Norman Bauer is trying to navigate the new future it represents.

“That is going to be the economic driver if we let it be, but my intent is for Stanton to grow on its own merit,” says Bauer.

DRIVE cohort members are encouraged to develop tailored solutions to the unique challenges facing their communities. For Stanton, that means getting the town “shovel ready,” as Bauer calls it, with the infrastructure to support a growing population. Stormwater management is top of that list. Flooding is already a concern where a drainage ditch cuts through town and frequently overflows.

“The first of the past dozen 100-year floods was in 1996 and they just kept coming,” says Bauer.

Without an updated land-use plan in place, development could worsen that. And without data on flooding and extreme rainfall risk, it will be much harder for Stanton to develop a plan that carries the town through what the future holds.

“We don’t know how it’s going to change, but we do have to look at the common fact that it is going to change. We do have to have a plan in place. This is one of those things where you can’t be reactionary,” says Bauer.

When I started at Woodwell this time last year, preparations for November’s COP30 in Brazil were in full swing. The prospect of international climate negotiations hosted in the Amazonian city of Belém provided a rare opportunity to focus attention on the under-appreciated roles of tropical forests in meeting climate mitigation and adaptation objectives. Woodwell’s presence at COP30—making presentations, speaking on panels, and meeting with national delegations—helped to deliver on that promise. Now our challenge is to maintain momentum on the many forest-related initiatives featured there.
My own focus at COP30 was promoting ways to mobilize new sources of funding to meet the needs for tropical forest protection, estimated by the United Nations Environment Programme to total $68 billion annually. In the preceding months, I supported the Forest & Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP)—a coalition of countries working to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030—to construct a “roadmap” on forest finance. The roadmap, launched in September during New York Climate Week, consists of six solutions ranging from carbon markets to sovereign debt management. The solutions are interlocking puzzle pieces that together could go a long way towards closing the finance gap.

One puzzle piece is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), an innovative forest finance mechanism (described in the Fall 2025 edition of this magazine) launched by the Brazilian COP30 Presidency and endorsed by 66 countries. The Facility will make annual payments to tropical forest countries per hectare of forest conserved, providing an important complement to other sources of forest finance. Funding for the payments will be generated by the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF), which relies on long-term loans and guarantees from sponsor countries to leverage commercial debt finance, which will in turn be invested in higher risk, higher return bonds. An impressive $6.7 billion in pledges were garnered toward the Fund by the end of the COP.

Having been a champion of the TFFF, contributing to its design during my service in the office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the Biden Administration, I was pleased with this outcome. At the same time, I am also well aware of the hurdles still ahead. Most immediately, the pressure is on to raise additional sponsor capital quickly: the Norwegian contribution of $3 billion to the TFIF is contingent on reaching at least $10 billion by the end of 2026. The ultimate target for sponsor capital is $25 billion, no easy task in the current geopolitical environment.

There’s also a lot of work to do on the spending side of the TFFF. An initial TFFF secretariat hosted at the World Bank will need to finalize the technical criteria for country eligibility and payments. Many tropical forest countries will need assistance in meeting specifications for satellite-based forest monitoring systems and financial management systems to ensure that at least 20% of the payments are channeled to frontline Indigenous peoples and local communities. These groups are often the most effective forest stewards. Woodwell scientists are engaging directly with the TFFF secretariat and key stakeholders in the design process, as well as providing analysis to build investor confidence that payments will result in their intended impacts.

Fortunately, those countries will be able to build on the extensive capacity and institutional infrastructure that has been developed through jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+) programs over the last two decades. Such programs serve as the basis for forest carbon crediting at the scale of entire countries or large subnational states, provinces, or Indigenous territories. Crediting over such large areas reduces the risks to social and environmental integrity that have troubled project-scale crediting.

At COP30, I had the pleasure of facilitating the first meeting of a newly launched Scaling JREDD+ Coalition incubated by the FCLP. The Coalition brings together governments, non-governmental organizations, and private sector actors to collaborate to address barriers to increasing both supply and demand for JREDD+ credits. Participants in the meeting identified nine issue areas needing collaborative action. They volunteered to work on task forces to address obstacles on both the supply and demand sides of forest carbon markets, ranging from how to nest projects into jurisdictional-scale programs to how to communicate more effectively to prospective buyers. Woodwell is well-placed to contribute to this work, and for me, it aligns with my service on the board of a JREDD+ certification body.

One of the most promising approaches for aligning finance with forest conservation goals is to raise awareness of the risks posed by deforestation to agricultural productivity and national economies. A key puzzle piece in the FCLP forest finance roadmap is to redirect private investment in traditional agricultural supply chains toward production systems that conserve forest resilience and the climate-stabilizing services forests provide.

In support of this approach, Woodwell scientists are leading contributors to the growing body of evidence showing how forest loss compounds the destabilizing effects of global warming by increasing local temperature extremes and disrupting rainfall patterns. We featured these findings at several events in Belém, including closing the TED Countdown House program with an entertaining game-show format, in which teams in the audience competed to guess the answers to questions about the implications of these findings for agriculture, water, and health.

Over the course of 2026, Woodwell staff—in coordination with our colleagues at our Brazil-based partner organization, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM)—will be engaging with the Government of Brazil as it develops another forest-related “roadmap”. Promised at the close of COP30, this roadmap will be more broadly focused on achieving the globally agreed-upon goal of halting and reversing forest loss and degradation by 2030. We’ll be working to ensure that the roadmap’s recommendations are informed by science. We’ll also be advocating for a process inclusive of the diverse countries, companies, and communities whose actions will determine whether or not the map leads to its desired destination.

From the permafrost peatlands of Interior Alaska to the tropical forests and savanna of Brazil, fire is catching. Climate change is exacerbating wildfire seasons around the globe year after year. Scientists at Woodwell Climate Research Center are working with communities across the globe to understand the extent of the risk and find solutions to address it.

The fire-climate connection

Climate change is creating hotter and drier extremes, and as a result, wildfires around the world are increasing in frequency and severity. In both the Arctic and the tropics, wildfire seasons are starting earlier and ending later.

The Arctic is home to the boreal ecosystem—a forested biome made up of mostly evergreen trees evolved to handle cold, dry winters and nutrient-poor soil. These trees have adaptations that help them thrive alongside wildfires, such as thick bark and cones that release their seeds after a fire. Wildfires historically benefited the boreal ecosystem by removing the ground’s top layer of vegetation and allowing it to regrow. However, with current wildfire seasons, more land is burning, and it’s burning hotter. More intense fires burn past the soil organic layer and expose permafrost—frozen ground that contains an accumulation of carbon from dead animal and plant matter.

“We’re seeing these permafrost thaw scenarios that were not happening before,” says Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Kayla Mathes, who assesses fire management strategies to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions in Alaska’s boreal ecosystem. “The boreal fire regime is shifting under climate change.”

In the tropics, fires are also becoming larger and more widespread. Rainforests, which are not adapted to fire, have been igniting from human activity and burning due to higher temperatures and drier seasons. Nearly 10 million acres of land burned in the Amazon rainforest in 2025.

The tropical savanna of the Cerrado, on the other hand, actually relies on fire and other disturbances to be healthy. Similar to the boreal region, the Cerrado’s vegetation has evolved to withstand fire and depends on natural burns to maintain biodiversity. But too much fire can devastate the region and threaten local communities.

The increasing intensity and frequency of fires in both the boreal forest and the tropical savanna are causing a destructive feedback loop. When fires burn forests, carbon stored in the trees, vegetation, and soil gets released into the atmosphere. More carbon in the atmosphere leads to hotter, drier conditions, causing more fires. Which means figuring out how to get these fires in check is critical to slowing climate change.

Improving fire management to fight climate change

Dr. Brendan Rogers, Woodwell’s Richard “Skee” Houghton Chair in Carbon Cycle Science, is leading research on boreal fire management. Rogers began this work eight years ago alongside Dr. Carly Phillips, a research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Dr. Peter Frumhoff, Woodwell Climate’s Senior Science Policy Advisor. The team received one of the first Woodwell Fund for Climate Solutions (FCS) grants to study fire management as a way to curb carbon emissions. The FCS is designed to provide scientists with seed funding to explore projects that test out innovative ideas for climate solutions. Launched in 2018, the FCS has funded over 80 projects.

In their study published in 2022, the scientists combined cost and emissions data to demonstrate how cost-effective fire management in Alaska was at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. They concluded that fire suppression efforts cost less than 13 dollars per ton of carbon dioxide emissions avoided, putting it on par with clean energy solutions like onshore wind in terms of cost-effectiveness.

Based on this research and the group’s collaboration with Alaska’s fire managers, in 2023 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dedicated over a million and a half acres of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge to a pilot project that would deploy fire management to protect ancient permafrost called Yedoma, which contains carbon that can be over 150,000 years old. This was the first-ever pilot project of boreal fire management for climate mitigation. 

“That was kind of a landmark moment,” says Rogers. “It’s the first time in the U.S., and internationally as far as we’re aware—outside of Australia—that any agency has conducted fire management for carbon.”

Following the success of this FCS-funded research, Rogers has been able to secure additional funding through the Alaska Venture Fund, Google.org, and the McCall MacBain Foundation. These grants are funding projects to identify and tackle fire management needs in Alaska, analyze carbon savings and cost-effectiveness of carbon protection, create a permafrost and carbon vulnerability map for Alaska and Canada, and expand work in fire management into Canada.

“Ultimately, we want to make sure this work moving forward is benefiting the atmosphere, ecosystems, and Arctic communities,” says Rogers.

Managing fire in concert with the ecosystem

The FCS has also helped enhance Woodwell’s fire research in the tropics.

Research Scientist Dr. Manoela Machado studies the impacts of human activities in fire regimes in tropical ecosystems. A biologist by training, she has been studying fires for 11 years. Her current FCS-funded project, focused on defining and measuring degradation in the Cerrado, will develop a new framework and map to monitor the health of the ecosystem.

“If fire is removed entirely, you allow the trees to overgrow, you shade the area, and you exclude the shrubs and herbaceous layer that depends on the light,” says Machado. “You lose biodiversity.”

Machado hopes that her degradation framework will help government agencies, environmental nonprofits, and carbon market participants define degradation in a system that relies on disturbance to exist. She also hopes that fire management in the Cerrado and other fire-prone tropical forests can work with local communities on the ground—something that she does herself.

In addition to collaborating with team members from Woodwell Climate, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), and the University of Oxford, Machado is also working with Indigenous fire brigades to better understand their needs, and provide training in the use of GIS tools to aid their work.

“Being on the ground and understanding those needs, and then figuring out what I can do with my expertise to help in their fight, has been crucial for me and my development both as a scientist and a human,” says Machado.

Partnering with local communities for fire management

While science has helped better understand fires, effectively curbing them requires researchers to prioritize the social, political, and economic factors that drive them.

One example lies in the Cerrado. Although the tropics region can experience natural wildfire, human activity is the largest driver of fire occurrence.

“We have lost half of the vegetation in the most biodiverse tropical savanna in the world to agriculture expansion,” says Machado. “The rest of what remains—less than half of native vegetation—is subject to some pressures.”

These fires are often caused by land being cleared for agriculture or infrastructure development. But not all fires are ill-intentioned.

Traditionally, Indigenous communities in both the tropics and the Arctic have used fire as a tool to manage landscapes and clear areas, cultivate important plants, and steward the health of the ecosystem. Being aware of the social implications of fire use is an important part of intentional fire management, Machado says.

“Thousands of people rely on fire and depend on that ecosystem—they don’t want their land to burn in a catastrophic way either,” says Machado. “We can’t equate large-scale deforestation, bad actors, and predatory agricultural practices with subsistence agriculture by local communities, by rural communities, by quilombolas, by Indigenous People.”

In the Arctic, too, Indigenous communities have a strong connection with fire. Senior Arctic Lead Edward Alexander is working with the Permafrost Pathways team to elevate Arctic Indigenous Knowledge and inform policy solutions for the North’s intensifying fire regime. He has helped facilitate connections with communities in the Yukon Flats region of Alaska. Mathes is now partnering with these communities to conduct a boreal wildfire risk assessment centered on Indigenous needs. This FCS-funded project will support the co-production of a wildfire management needs assessment for villages in the Yukon Flats.

This information will help fire managers identify areas that are likely to experience wildfire and carbon emissions from burning and permafrost thaw, and will facilitate the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge and community needs in fire management priorities.

“Fire management is a very emotional and fraught conversation—we’re talking about people’s lives, we’re talking about people’s homes, talking about money,” Mathes says. “There are a lot of things that make it challenging, but now we’ve gotten to a place where, in these spaces, we all agree that this is super important. So now we have to actually do the work.

South Coast scientists: To improve bay health, start at the source

Miles of rivers and tributaries, including New Bedford’s Buttonwood Brook, empty into Buzzards Bay. Researchers, advocates, and city and town officials are working together to clean them up.

hands in purple latex gloves use a plastic syringe to take a water sample from a stream

Peering over the edge of a stone bridge, Francesca LoPresti cast a bucket into the Mattapoisett River. She pulled it up slowly and grabbed a syringe, filling it with the clouded water. She then squirted the water back out onto the river below, the stream forming a clean, unbroken arc.

“This is scientific,” she assured with a laugh. “We have to get a clean sample, so we rinse out the first take.”

LoPresti is a fellow with the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth. For the past week, she and her colleagues at the Buzzards Bay Coalition had been visiting the rivers and streams that make up the Buzzards Bay watershed, collecting water samples and testing them for contaminants.

Continue reading on The New Bedford Light.

In October 2025, community partners from across Alaska gathered in Anchorage for a hands-on GIS and community mapping workshop organized through the Permafrost Pathways project. It was meant to be a space for learning and an opportunity to build technical skills using digital mapping software and working with environmental data. But in the wake of a devastating storm, what was initially a straightforward training became a real-time response to a region in crisis.

Read More on Permafrost Pathways.

Since the 1970s, categorical exclusions (CEs) within the National Environmental Policy Act have applied only to activities that have been consistently and scientifically reported to not have a significant effect on the environment. The thinning of forest and woodland density of areas up to 5,000 acres, a significant increase from the current 70 acre limit, would undoubtedly have a significant impact on the environment, as demonstrated by the large repertoire of scientific research highlighting the critical role of forests in storing atmospheric carbon. Furthermore, the forest ecosystem has become increasingly vulnerable to wildfire due to human activity and climate change. Wildfires present extreme threats to human health, with over 15,000 deaths being attributed to wildfire particulate matter over the last 15 years. Even without any major escalation in the deterioration of our forests, the scale and impact of wildfire smoke on human health is projected to increase.

Altered fire regimes based on the principles of wildfire suppression, which this proposed revision uses in its justification, do not recognize the natural benefit of fire and have been shown to exacerbate fire-associated emissions. With such a critical issue at hand, the consultation of scientists and local communities is imperative, which is not reflected in this proposal. Thus, Woodwell strongly opposes the broadening of this CE for the Bureau of Land Management.

Scientific Objection to the Categorical Exclusion for Forest and Woodland Density Management

The proposed revision of this CE is based on the strategy of mechanical thinning. However, there is little to no scientific evidence concluding that the act of mechanical thinning alone universally lessens the risk of wildfire, as integrated fire management strategies are extremely dependent on the context of the ecosystem in which it is deployed. Woodwell research has found that without tailoring the wildfire strategies to their specific environment and pairing it with other more traditional wildfire management methods, these actions may have adverse consequences.

Under conditions of increased temperatures, which would be further amplified by increased carbon emissions driven by deforestation, burned area is expected to increase. With the incredible danger that wildfires pose to human safety, any actions that may degrade natural ecosystems and amplify wildfire impacts must be coupled with extensive environmental review, not the absence of such. By foregoing environmental review through the expansion of this CE, the Federal government is inviting the potential to further endanger our forest ecosystems and the lives of Americans.

The Critical Role of Forests in Carbon Sequestration

The proposed rule fails to recognize the integral role that forests play in carbon sequestration. BLM forests contain about 8 million acres of old growth and 13 million acres of mature forest – about ⅔ of the total area of BLM forest. Mature and old-growth forests, with their much older and larger trees, hold more carbon. Mature and old-growth forests are also more resilient and adaptive in the face of disturbances such as wildfires, which makes them a high priority for environmental protection. It is hard to imagine that these carbon-dense ecosystems would be excluded from logging under the proposed CE.

Woodwell researchers have also found that even beyond the cooling effects of sequestered carbon, forests provide biophysical cooling effects on a local and global scale. This unique quality promotes local climate stability, reducing extreme temperatures year round.

Since 2001, forest fire carbon emissions have increased by 60%. It is projected that by mid-century, wildfires in the northern region of North America would alone contribute to a cumulative net source of nearly 12 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into our atmosphere, further exacerbating temperatures and subsequent wildfire ignitions.

Impacts on Climate Resilience and Risk Mitigation

While the proposal argues that expanding forest thinning will reduce wildfires, scientific research has frequently called on officials to implement natural climate solutions to increase ecosystem resilience and limit climatic threats such as wildfire.

Fire is a natural and integrally important process in the life cycle of our forest ecosystems. Woodwell scientists study and promote traditional methods of fire management of local and indigenous peoples who recognize the environmental benefits of fire via prescribed burns. Trained professionals can employ these tactics of prescribed or controlled burns to reduce the build up of natural fuels, benefiting plants and wildlife by recycling the carbon back to the earth.

Conversely, we have found that more modern fire suppression tactics have led to oversuppression, contributing to the buildup of dry fuel on the forest floor. Combined with the ever warming temperatures destabilizing atmospheric conditions, increasingly frequent lightning strikes ignite these more flammable forests.
regular fires to periodically clear out this fuel, the land has become more vulnerable to intense and widespread fires. Woodwell is especially concerned with the proposed expansion of the CE of forest and woodland density as it relies on the tactic of mechanical thinning and strives for wildfire suppression, thus risking increased rates of wildfire. In order to properly manage fires in a way that creates a healthier and safer environment, fire management must utilize fire itself.

The proposed revision’s emphasis on mechanical thinning and logging also raises concerns regarding human impact. Anthropogenic influences such as population density, a human footprint index, and roadless volume all have significant statistical correlations to fire occurrence. Previous actions, such as the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule, have already demonstrated the harm that logging and other commercial activities pose to forests. Recent research has shown that roads increase the likelihood of wildfire ignitions because human activities are the most common cause of wildfire; once an area becomes accessible, the probability of wildfire increases. The massive expansion from 70 acres to 5,000 acres eligible for the CE of forest and woodland density would only incite more logging activities and the
acceleration of associated fire occurrence.

Lastly, this announcement fails to elaborate on the “additional tool” which it claims will assist decision-makers in planning areas to implement fuel treatments. Without a demonstrated and sound scientific basis for this tool, the likelihood that project decisions will reflect consideration of forest values beyond timber production is cast into doubt.

Conclusion
The proposed expansion of the Categorical Exclusion rejects scientific evidence and prioritizes logging activities over the safety of American citizens. Woodwell urges the Department of the Interior to:

  1. Integrate the implementation of prescribed or controlled burns to lessen excess vegetation in wildfire mitigation, as opposed to suppressing fires and building flammable materials.
  2. Engage and consult with local communities to create collaborative and tailored fire management strategies based on the particular ecosystem in which they will be deployed.
  3. Provide details about the “additional tool” that will assist in designating fuel treatment areas, specifically its scientific basis and values.
  4. Evaluate each project for the impact of estimated carbon emissions on the broader environment.
  5. Maintain the CE of 70 acres for tree and woodland density so as to minimize forest disturbances and build ecosystem resilience to wildfire at minimum. Ideally, perform environmental assessments under NEPA for all projects regardless of size.

Woodwell Climate Research Center urges the Council on Environmental Quality to reconsider aspects of this Categorical Exclusion to ensure that the pursuit of efficiency does not compromise the scientific rigor and comprehensive scope necessary for effective environmental review under NEPA. Accelerating logging activities and forest deterioration via inappropriate thinning will only amplify the wildfire risk that this proposal claims to address. It is imperative that the Bureau of Land Management’s NEPA implementing procedures facilitate, rather than hinder, the full consideration of environmental impacts, cumulative effects, and health of our citizens.

Chelsea, MA, did everything right. The city had identified flooding as a major climate threat, sought out data on it, mobilized the community, and secured funding to design a solution. They were on their way to building climate resilience, until the change in federal administration forced them to regroup.

In April, 2025, the federal administration announced it was illegally canceling the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program—a FEMA initiative that funded local infrastructure projects to protect communities from hazards like flooding and wildfire—on the grounds that it was “wasteful spending.”

The Island End River Flood Resilience Project was among the projects de-funded in the sweep. The project reenvisioned the shoreline of Chelsea and neighboring Everett, MA, with the construction of a flood barrier, tidal gates, and salt marsh restoration to protect both cities from extreme flooding. 

The cities are vulnerable to two forms of flooding—storm surge coming up from Boston Harbor and extreme rainfall events. 

“This district is already flooding at least once a year to the extent that trucks can’t always pass down the road,” says Chelsea Housing and Community Development Deputy Director Emily Granoff. 

Climate change will exacerbate this. According to a 2022 risk assessment conducted by Woodwell Climate’s Just Access program on behalf of the city and local non-profit GreenRoots, over 20% of the city will be at risk of flooding by 2050. Extreme high-intensity rainfall events could become three times as likely by mid-century and become an annual occurrence by 2080.

The irony of the cuts, Granoff says, is that this project was designed to save the cities of Chelsea and Everett millions of dollars. A cost-benefit analysis conducted for the project found that for every dollar spent on flood prevention, they would save more than $30 of repair and recovery spending in the wake of a major disaster. Several pieces of vital industrial infrastructure sit in the floodplain, including a busy commuter rail line, major truck corridors, and the New England Produce Center, which distributes fruit and vegetables to most northeastern U.S. grocery stores. 

In addition to the $50 million BRIC grant, the project also lost a $20 million matching grant from the state, which was contingent on the federal funding. Without the project, the city will suffer $3.7 billion in direct damage, in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages from employees who can’t get to work, lost sales from businesses forced to close, and health care costs from food insecurity.

“It’s important to realize how one federal program being cut like this can affect so many other things downstream,” says Eli Fenichel, director of communications and environmental policy in the office of Chelsea’s State Senator, Sal DiDomenico. “These projects are so important to protect businesses, communities, people, and save us—taxpayers, cities, states—so much money in future damage costs.”

The Island End River project was in the design phase when the BRIC grant was cancelled. After processing the loss, Granoff says project partners regrouped and identified two paths forward. The first would be completing the design and then putting it on the shelf, waiting for a more favorable funding environment. But that option comes with risks.

“The biggest risk is that we get unlucky,” says Nasser Brahim, director of climate resilience for the Mystic River Watershed Association, a partner on the project. “It’s just a matter of time before that area floods again. Every time there’s a nor’easter, every time there’s a king tide, we roll the dice. The odds are not in our favor in the long run.”

The second option would be to take a phased approach and seek out smaller chunks of funding for each stage. This strategy would still take longer to complete, but would allow the most critical flood mitigation measures to proceed—starting with a floodwall and culvert reconstruction. The later phases would bring in marsh restoration and more waterfront access.

The drawback to a phased approach is that pure infrastructure projects are less attractive to funders than nature restoration. Mystic River Watershed Association identified a possible opportunity to request funding for phase one from the Army Corps of Engineers, under the Water Resources Development Act, which is being re-authorized this year. According to Roseann Bongiovanni, executive director of the Chelsea-based community organization GreenRoots, the data in Woodwell’s Risk Assessment has helped the cities and their partners continue making the case for support for the Island End River project.

 “The Woodwell report gave us the science-backed data that helped give weight to our advocacy around coastal resilience. We’ve noticed a change in the response of decision-makers since we were able to provide data about the risks,” says Bongiovanni.

Whether the project takes a phased approach or waits for full funding, the federal cuts represent a delay to a project that could save both lives and money.

“Every year we go without completing this project is another year where our people and critical infrastructure are at risk,” says Bongiovanni.

At COP 30, the Brazilian Presidency announced that it will present two Roadmaps to advance the new global goals set by governments in 2023: halting and reversing deforestation, and transitioning away from fossil fuels. The Presidency has called for civil society inputs for both Roadmaps, and Woodwell experts have prepared an input for the Deforestation Roadmap.

Woodwell’s input related to the process of developing the Roadmap highlights, in particular, that:

Woodwell’s input related to substantive content of the Roadmap highlights six types of action to address barriers to halting and reversing deforestation and degradation, i.e.:

The quality, legitimacy and continuity of the Roadmaps will depend on the expertise and buy-in of government and stakeholders. Woodwell looks forward to the Presidency’s first Roadmap proposal in the coming weeks and will stay engaged to ensure that the Roadmaps are built on the latest available science and best practices.

Read the full submission.