A newly released report says that increasing portions of the National Forest Service’s budget are dedicated to fighting wildfires. It also suggests that may have a detrimental impact on the rest of its work. KDLG’s Chase Cavanaugh has more.
The United States Department of Agriculture recently released a report on the cost of fighting wildfires. It notes that costs for the US Forest Service, which carries out fire suppression operations have increased significantly. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says this has resulted in the Service having to borrow money specifically for firefighting as well as shifting its internal budget.
“Recently, we’ve experienced overall reductions to the Forest Service budget as a result of sequester and some of the budget caps, but over the last 10-15 years, we’ve also seen a sustained shifting of funds from other parts of the budget to fire suppression, which explains why the fire suppression budget was at one point roughly 16% of our forest service budget. Today, the money used to put out fires is nearly 42%.”
Part of the increased costs come from a longer fire season as well as less money going toward preventing the conditions for wildfires. Vilsack says the cost difference between prevention and firefighting is significant.
“It’s expensive obviously because you have anywhere up to 12 to 20 thousand people working to put the fires out, so you have enormous equipment costs, you have fuel costs for the aircraft involved and engaged in fighting these fires. You also have to essentially put together in a relatively short period of time small cities and small towns to be able to service the needs of the people who are fighting these fires. When these folks come off their shift, they have to be able to take a shower, they have to be able to get a meal, they have to be able to sleep, and so you have to set up basically small towns. There’s sanitation issues as well. All of that costs a substantial amount of money.”
The report also says the shift of funds will reduce the effectiveness of other Forest Service efforts. The largest include deffered maintenance, which has been reduced 95%, facailities, reduced 67%, and land management planning, which faces a 63% reduction. Vilsack says even smaller reductions can have a significant impact.
“You have a 17 percent reduction in that part of the Forest Service budget that’s dedicated to wildlife and fishery habitat management, you’re obviously going to have an impact and effect. You’re not going to be able to do as much work or more intense work as you would like. Every dollar that is not spent in that account that would have otherwise been spent because it’s been shifted to fire suppression is a dollar that isn’t helping to maintain habitat, isn’t helping to deal with endangered species, isn’t helping to mitigate the consequences for not having adequate resources there for some time.”
Vilsack says to truly deal with the budget shortfalls, congress needs to appropriate additional funds to the forest service, both so that it can effectively fight wildfires, and shore up its other efforts.
“We need congressional action. We need an effort on the part of congress as they return to provide stability and security and to enable us to do a better job at restoring and making our forests more resilient.”
The full report is available for viewing here, while a summary of state by state Forest Service cuts (including Alaska) can be found here.
