Markell Ripps

February 15, 2009

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is in an increasingly hot struggle to receive more money for fighting fires across the west. Migration to the west to build one's dream home caused 8.6 million homes to be built from 1982 to 2007 within 30 miles of a national forest. Moreover, Smokey the Bear, who has encouraged us to put out and prevent forest fires since we were toddlers, was giving us bad advice; allowing wooded fuel to accumulate on forest floors creates hotter and more devastating fires. Increased development has caused even more incentive to put out forest fires quickly, and combined with recent years of drought and record heat, has created a deadly recipe for disaster. In 2006, the USFS spent $2.5 billion thinning fuels and fighting fires that burned 9.9 million acres--both numbers breaking previous records.

In order to fight these fires, the USFS began to take money from other areas of its jurisdiction such as grazing, camping ground maintenance, research, wildlife, road repair, and backcountry wilderness management. In 2008, 45% of the USFS's budget was allocated to fire fighting. In response, in 2008 Congress proposed the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act (aptly the FLAME Act) to provide emergency funding assistance to both the Department of the Interior and National Forest System lands. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. said that the act was important because "this fund will prevent the soaking up of all the other dollars that should be used for prevention." This fund would also be separate from normal wildfire suppression funds and would be determined based off of the average cost of fighting wildfires during the previous five years. Although the House passed FLAME on July 9, 2008 (H.R. 5541), the idea never caught on with the Senate; referring it to its Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, but never passing it.

Most recently, the proposed stimulus bill has sparked debate once again on this topic and has caused a rift between the House and Senate. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) introduced an amendment to add more than $2.5 billion for public lands programs. Of this amount, he proposed to add $870 million to the USFS wildfire management, totaling more than $1.5 billion. However, he soon was forced to give up his efforts when the Senate's compromise cut $165 million from the USFS's wildfire management funds, lowering the Senate total to $485 million; compared to $850 million in the House-passed bill. Congress recently settled on $500 million.

The good news is that political leaders appear to care about this issue. The controversial Healthy Forest Restoration Act, passed in 2003, aimed to facilitate removal of hazardous fuels. Additionally, this new stimulus bill is bringing up the importance of funding wildfire management for debate. However, the bad news is that this seeming recent attention by lawmakers may be all smoke and no fire.

Ben Geman, Alex Kaplun, Noelle Straub, and Allison Winter, Energy, Natural Resources Programs Trimmed as Senate Prepares to Pass Stimulus Bill, Environment & Energy Daily, Feb. 9, 2009, available at http://stevens.vermontlaw.edu:2069/EEDaily/2009/02/09/2/.

Govtrack.us, H.R. 5541: Federal Land Assistance, Maintenance and Enhancement Act, available at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-5541.

Jesse McKinley and Kirk Johnson, On Fringe of Forests, Homes and Wildfires Meet, The New York Times-National, Jun. 26, 2007.

Joel Gallob, Fire-fighting Bill Helps but Leaves Funding Gap, RavalliRepublic, Jul. 2008, http://www.ravallirepublic.com/articles/2008/07/15/news/news68.txt.

Noelle Straub, Lawmakers Vow to Boost NPS Budget after Stimulus Cuts, Environment & Energy Daily, Feb 13, 2009, available at http://stevens.vermontlaw.edu:2069/EEDaily/2009/02/13/3/

U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service, Protecting People and Natural Resources: A Cohesive Fuels Treatment Strategy (Feb. 2006) available at http://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/resources/documents/CFTS_03-03-06.pdf.