By Zach Prosser, Marco Rocha-Ibarra, and Jay Sharpe
Fast Facts
Decoupling the fire prevention and forest restoration budget from the fire suppression budget would:
- Reduce large-scale mega-fires
- Save life and property
- Bring forest ecosystems back to a pre-european settlement state
- Create more resilient forest ecosystems
- Save money for taxpayers through a reduction in fire suppression costs
- Enhance wildlife habitat
- Maintain forests for future generation
Executive Summary
For the past four decades, the increasing frequency and severity of wildland fire in the western United States has created significant issues for the United States Forest Service (USFS). These issues have included loss of critical habitat, loss of revenue via burned timberlands, and a massive loss of taxpayer dollars used for fire suppression.
We have actively suppressed wildfires for 110 years, and active suppression has the unintended consequence of increased fuel loads. The combination of increased fuel loads and climate change has created a recipe for explosive high-severity fires.
The expansion of the wildland urban interface (WUI) has created an additional layer of difficulty and increased pressure on the managers to find a solution to the problem. A large body of science exists showing us that strategic fuels treatments (vegetation removal and prescribed fire) can help reduce fire severity, and thus reduce the risk to life and property that wildfire poses.
In this policy brief, we intend to communicate the need of the USFS to invest in fire prevention and forest resilience rather than active suppression by addressing needs in the following categories:
- Budget structure
- Scale of treatments
- Education
Recommendations
Educate stakeholders and the public: real change cannot happen without public buyin. Inhabitants of the WUI should be convinced to sign off on a plan that includes prescribed fire and mechanical thinning on forested land managed by different ownerships.
Cooperate with the public and stakeholders to make this happen. Every community has different needs regarding wildfire risk reduction, and a key part of learning these needs is sitting down with the people who know the land best and have a stake in potential losses.
Guarantee funding for long-term prevention projects. The first step here is to decouple the suppression and prevention budgets. The second is to provide this funding to the USFS districts that need it most so districts can translate these funds into long-term wildfire prevention plans.
Utilize this funding skillfully and efficiently. Each district should create a 20-year prevention plan with annual benchmarks. Plans should be considered fluid. Revisit plans every two to three years to evaluate success by comparing objectives to the material results.
Links
Full policy brief: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NV4LT9XF2HA1LR_Qm_WYcYW5YZOLxq1Rv__1yTBvD3M/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jMOs8ihkSV6rvpLkNLg8VDpPKlFaAN2UcEoi0TcW34U/edit#slide=id.p
