This week USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack released a report showing that for the first time in history the United States Forest Service (USFS) has spent more the 50 percent of its total Budget on firefighting costs. Despite predictions that it would happen this year, having it occur so early in fire season is alarming, and further highlights the need to change the structure of fire funding at the federal level.
Fire borrowing or fire transfer – the mechanism by which fuels management, forest health, watershed improvement, and post-fire mitigation project funds are “borrowed” to pay for fire suppression costs – seems all but guaranteed this year as the fire season is far from over, and already more than half of the Budget is expended.
The USDA report highlights the staff time and funding that has been “lost” to fire fighting. Comparing staffing between 1998 and today, fire staffing has increased 114 percent, in comparison to staffing levels for non-fire personnel, which has decreased by 39 percent. In terms of funding, the USFS has approximately half a billion dollars less for non-fire related activities than it did in 1998.
“The release of this report is very timely based on the current hectic pace of wildfires in this country,” said USFS Chief Tom Tidwell. “We have been pointing out this challenge for the past few years, but we have not been able to effectively address it through our current budget process. It is important to keep the focus on this problem, ensure the discussion continues, and a solution to the funding problem be found.”
“The federal government does not pay for the response to any other natural disasters this way,” said RCRC Chair Supervisor Lee Adams of Sierra County. “RCRC strongly supports the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act and other mechanisms to change the funding structure for wildfires on federal land. Spending more on fire suppression and less on fire prevention efforts is exactly reversed from the direction we should be going with forest management. We can only hope that this report finally highlights the need for the change enough that we can make appreciable changes to the funding this year. RCRC’s message has always been that the current system is not a rational way to fund a predictable expense.”
The full USDA report can be accessed here. A letter-to-the-Editor from RCRC Executive Vice President Patricia Megason on the broken federal funding system for wildfires can be accessed here.