The U.S. Forest Service is for the first time spending more than half its annual budget on firefighting as Alaska and other areas of the country experience particularly destructive wildfires, according to a report released Wednesday.
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2015 is the first year in the Forest Services 110-year history the agency had to spend half its budget on wildfire fighting costs.
“Climate change and other factors are causing the cost of fighting fires to rise every year,” he said in a statement.
“The Forest Service in recent years has absorbed skyrocketing costs related to fire and relied increasingly on ‘fire transfer, ‘ moving resources from non-fire accounts to cover firefighting costs”, the new report states.
Another factor is that fire seasons today are 78 days longer than they were 30-years-ago. “Increasing development in fire-prone areas also puts more stress on the Forest Service’s suppression efforts”.
If the Forest Service’s budgeting process stays the same, Vilsack fears that funding for projects that demonstrably reduce both wildfire and climate risks, such as forest restoration, will dry up.
There might be a solution with the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, bipartisan legislation already introduced into the House and Senate that would treat wildfires more like natural disasters, end transfers between budget line items, and replenish the agency’s capacity to restore resilient forests to protect against future fires. When firefighting costs exceed the amount appropriated by Congress, the emergency spending would then be exempt from normal budget caps, rather than having it be siphoned off from other programs. As our forests go up in flames, so too does the budget of the U.S. Forest Service, putting at risk lives, property, clean air and water, and jobs for thousands.
The situation, says US Rep. Mike Simpson (R) of Idaho, “has created a devastating cycle that prevents agencies from doing needed hazardous fuels removal or timber harvests, leading to worse fires”.
No serious injuries have been reported, but a Forest Service ranger died last Thursday in a smaller fire in the Modoc National Forest near California’s border with Oregon.
Cal Fire crews have responded to more than 4,200 wildfires large and small so far this year, about 1,500 more than average. That’s three times as many acres as were burned during the same period a year ago. The acreage burned in the fire, destroying the trees and valuable wildlife habitat, along with more than 200 homes.
While catastrophic wildfires have increased in the West over the past decade, Colorado’s national forests are suffering from yet another force: budget woes. From 1998 to 2015 it’s non-fire personnel has decreased by 39 percent while fire staff has more than doubled. Money for facilities has declined by 68 percent.
Under the bill, 70 percent of the costs of fire suppression are treated just as they are now – paid for out of the regular Forest Service budget. “The time has come for Congress to change the way it funds the Forest Service”.
Since 2000, ten states have endured their largest wildfire on record.
“If this continues, the Forest Service is just going to be a massive fire department”, he said.
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“Wildfires are every bit of a natural disaster as those other activities”, Simpson said.
