Governor David Acton today urged the Legislature to take up the Texas Private Land Stewardship and Wildfire Resilience Act of 2026, which he introduced last month and which is scheduled for debate this month.

Most Texas acres are privately owned. When those acres are overgrown, a dry wind and a spark can jump a fence line and take timber, cattle, homes, and volunteer firefighters with them. The bill treats landowners as the first line of defense instead of as a problem to be regulated. It is voluntary. It sunsets in two years unless the Legislature renews it. It does not create a new tax, a permanent agency, or a new restriction on how a person uses his own land.

“If a rancher or a rural family is willing to thin the stand, restore native grass, or cut a real firebreak, the state should make that work easier, not tie them up with red tape,” Governor Acton said. “We will lend a share of the infrastructure cost, publish clear standards, and get out of the way.”

The Act creates a two-year, opt-in wildfire-resilience program for verified private-land projects: forest thinning to Texas A&M Forest Service standards, native grassland restoration, and permanent firebreaks.

Fully repayable loans may cover infrastructure that makes those projects possible, including temporary access roads, staging areas, and biomass collection points.

Texas A&M Forest Service and the Texas Department of Agriculture would publish science-based standards by ecoregion, offer free or low-cost plans and consultations, and keep a public listing of verified contractors, loggers, equipment, and biomass buyers so a landowner can find a crew and a market without hiring a lobbyist.

Catastrophic fire does not wait on a task force. Thinning and firebreaks are ordinary land work that rural crews already know how to do. The biggest barrier is often simply startup capital; but the cost is small compared to wildfires later.

Gov. Acton is calling for swift passage of the commonsense bill.