On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that wildland fire suppression costs for this fiscal year have exceeded $2 billion, making 2017 the most expensive fire suppression year in USDA Forest Service (USFS) history. The costs of fighting wildfires on national forest lands consistently exceeds 55 percent of the USFS budget annually, with that percentage rising slightly each year as the agency’s resources are pulled away from forest management projects that would help prevent such a large number of high severity wildfires. The implications are particularly great in California, where one-fifth of the total land mass is managed by the USFS and more than 70 percent lies in RCRC member counties.
The practice of moving funds from forest management to fire suppression activities has become known as “fire borrowing.” Several federal measures have been proposed in recent years to end fire borrowing and fund fire suppression activities from emergency funds, but none have successfully passed through Congress. Both USDA Secretary Sonny Purdue and newly-appointed USFS Chief Tony Tooke once again called for Congress on Thursday to end fire borrowing by committing to passing legislation to fund fire suppression activities from emergency funds as other disasters are funded to allow the USFS to direct its funds toward wildfire prevention and forest management projects.
The USDA press release can be accessed here.