Washington Congressman Dan Newhouse led 24 members of the Congressional Western Caucus in a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore urging him to immediately utilize forest management techniques to prevent catastrophic wildfires. The letter responds to the Forest Service decision to place a 90-day ban on prescribed fires, which the caucus believes removes an essential wildfire prevention tool from state and local land managers. Newhouse claims history and decades of federal land management have exhibited that one-size-fits-all approaches by the federal government do not work and handcuffing state and local land managers and foresters in the middle of wildfire season takes away critical forest management tools. Newhouse called on the Biden Administration to rescind the prohibition on prescribed fires. In May the Forest Service announced a pause on prescribed fire operations on all National Forest System lands in order to conduct a 90-day review of protocols, decision support tools, and practices, after a major fire in New Mexico was found to have been caused by a poorly executed prescribed fire.