Department Of Natural Resources, State Of Ohio

The Department of Natural Resources, State of Ohio Division of Forestry operates as a state government entity and federal grant recipient, delivering forest management, invasive species control, wildfire prevention and suppression, urban and community forestry, and ecosystem restoration services to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and other civilian federal agencies. The Division of Forestry is a U.S. state government agency headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, competing exclusively under full-and-open grant mechanisms rather than SBA set-asides; it holds no federal prime contracts, only grants and cooperative agreements.

The Division of Forestry's federal work spans forest health protection, timber production support, invasive species and forest pest management, hazardous fuels reduction, wildfire risk mitigation, reforestation infrastructure, and conservation easement acquisitions across Ohio's approximately 8.1 million acres of public and private forestland. Representative recent work includes a $4.257 million USDA Forest Service grant (August 2025) for six integrated forest management programs—Forest Stewardship, Forest Health Protection, Urban and Community Forestry, State Fire Capacity, Volunteer Fire Capacity, and Wildfire Risk Reduction—running through June 2030; a $5 million Inflation Reduction Act Landscape Scale Restoration award (January 2025) to provide cost-sharing and technical assistance to private forest landowners for participation in environmental markets such as carbon offset and ecosystem services programs; a $4.712 million Cooperative Forestry Assistance award (August 2024) for forest health monitoring, invasive species control, wildfire prevention, urban tree planting, conservation easement acquisitions, and landscape restoration through June 2029; and a $3.83 million Inflation Reduction Act Forest Legacy Program grant (March 2024) for conservation easements, fee-simple land purchases, sustainable forest management, reforestation, and habitat conservation through June 2028. The Division also manages a $9 million Inflation Reduction Act Urban and Community Forestry award (September 2023) focused on environmental justice—planting over 1,250 large-class climate-resilient street trees in disadvantaged neighborhoods across Columbus, Hamilton, Lakemore, Painesville, Parma Heights, Sidney, and Tiffin, with sub-awards to local government entities.

Customer concentration is extreme and monolithic. The Department of Agriculture Forest Service R9-Eastern Region and the broader USDA Forest Service account for approximately 99% of recent awards (136 of 175 total awards) spanning 70 and 66 awards respectively. The Department of Agriculture National Resources Conservation Service placed 27 awards. The Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 anchored two awards, including a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative project for streambank restoration and riparian buffer enhancement on Blue Creek in the Maumee River area of concern (September 2022, completion December 2026), where the Division of Forestry oversees sub-awarded implementation by The Nature Conservancy. Activity has fluctuated—three awards in 2022, thirteen each in 2023 and 2024, eight in 2025, and four through June 2026—with five awards carrying completion dates within the next twenty-four months and therefore facing recompete exposure. The Division of Forestry acts as prime recipient on 173 awards (99%) and sub-recipient on two awards—both from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for forestry technical assistance and landowner education in northern Ohio's Lake Erie watersheds (August 2025 and November 2023). Federal grant dollars obligated total $151.5 million across the portfolio snapshot, concentrated entirely in USDA Forest Service cooperative and project grants under CFDAs 10.664 (Cooperative Forestry Assistance), 10.731 (Inflation Reduction Act Landscape Scale Restoration), 10.734 (Inflation Reduction Act Forest Legacy Program), 10.698 (State and Private Forestry Cooperative Fire Assistance), 10.680 (Forest Health Protection), 10.697 (Hazardous Fuel Reduction), 10.727 (Urban and Community Forestry), 10.721 (Temporary Bridge Program), 10.717 (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Restoration/Revegetation), and 10.736 (Bipartisan Infrastructure Act Nursery Vegetation).