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Oregon and Washington leaders are using the start of the region’s wildfire season to once again ask Congress for more money for prescribed burns.

The practice of strategically starting low-intensity fires across forests to improve soil and ecosystem health and prevent catastrophic wildfires has been common among tribes in the West for millenia. In recent years, it has gained more traction among the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Oregon Department of Forestry as an urgently needed wildfire prevention tool. But increasing the scale and speed of such burns has been difficult due to fears of unhealthy, smoky air and the potential for fire to jump to private property.