Too much of the U.S. Forest Service's budget - 48 percent - is eaten up by ever-growing fire suppression costs, to the detriment of other programs, all agreed during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing.
They said a good first step in fixing the problem would be to create a separate fund to pay for fighting the less than 2 percent of fires that escape initial attack - and which account for almost 85 percent of fire suppression costs.
Veto “Sonny” LaSalle, executive director of the Bitterroot Valley's Big Sky Coalition, supported the bill as well - but said money is only half the problem. The underlying causes of worsening fire seasons must also be addressed, he said, including global climate change, too many trees and legal entanglements over large-scale thinning and restoration projects.
Jack Ward Thomas and four other former chiefs of the Forest Service joined together to support the bill. Thomas testified that the current system of funding firefighting has been “tragic” in its results. Reductions in personnel, office closings and other cost-saving efforts became counterproductive and have demoralized the agency, he said.
The bill could “help restore the Forest Service to a more effective status, although that will take some time,” said Thomas, now a professor at the University of Montana.
The House Agriculture Committee is considering a similar bill, which may be combined with the resources measure. That bill contains provisions not in the resources legislation. It would provide firefighting grants to local communities and create “good neighbor” partnerships with states for projects that reduce hazardous fuels in national forests.
The chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., and the heads of the relevant subcommittees introduced the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement - or FLAME - Act. Rahall said the Forest Service has been turned into the “Fire Service.”
The top Republican on the panel, Alaska Rep. Don Young, supports it, as does panel member Rep. William Sali, R-Idaho.
The amount of money in the “FLAME Fund” would be based on the average amounts spent by the Forest Service and Interior Department to suppress catastrophic fires over the preceding five fiscal years.
Last year, the Forest Service spent $741 million more than budgeted and Interior spent $249 million more than budgeted - a total of nearly $1 billion - for emergency wildfire suppression.
Congress would have to approve money for the fund each year. It would be separate from the regular budget for the agencies, which also is approved each year. The anticipated, largely predictable amounts for fire suppression activities for the agencies would continue; the FLAME Fund would only be used for catastrophic fires.
The secretaries of the departments would have to declare fires eligible by issuing an emergency declaration evaluating the size, severity and threat of the fire.
Other sponsors included Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands subpanel, and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee chairman.
Dicks said he would prefer to make the fund mandatory, which would not require congressional approval each year. But he supported the bill because it may be the “farthest we can go.”
The act would also require the Interior and Agriculture secretaries to submit to Congress one year after enactment a cohesive wildland fire management strategy.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced similar legislation in the Senate last summer.
That bill, the Stable Fire Funding Act, would authorize $600 million in seed money to create a trust fund for the Forest Service and $200 million in seed money for a BLM trust fund. That money would generate interest and be used to cover 80 percent of firefighting costs that exceed the agencies' annual budgets.
He described it as a stopgap measure that would kick in during some years but not others. More money would be added to the fund as necessary.
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