Chief orders spending freeze to siphon money toward fighting fires

NCFP is mentioned in this story in E&E News.
Here’s the link.
Below are some excerpts.

The “fire borrowing” has occurred with increasing frequency over the past decade as the cost of fighting wildfires has spiraled out of control.

Fire borrowing has happened six times in the past decade, Tidwell told a Senate panel in June, and has ranged from a low of $100 million in 2007 to a high of $999 million in 2002. Of the total $2.7 billion that was borrowed, about $2.3 billion was eventually restored by Congress but not without disruptions to important agency programs, he said (E&E Daily, June 5).

“Not only do these impacts affect the ability of the Forest Service to conduct stewardship work on national forests, they also affect agency partners, local governments and tribes,” Tidwell said.

As an example, past fire borrowing has forced the agency to halt trail work on the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail in California and repair many other trails and trailheads, wasting the opportunity to leverage thousands of volunteers. Failure to complete the work was expected to cause sedimentation and damage to watersheds.

Lawmakers from both parties have urged the administration to improve implementation of an emergency wildfire reserve known as the FLAME fund that Congress established in 2009. The FLAME fund was designed to prevent the raiding of other agency budgets. But that account is depleted, the agency has indicated.

“It didn’t take a crystal ball to predict that the Forest Service once again would be forced to steal money from hazardous fuels and other fire prevention programs to pay for spiraling costs of fighting fires,” said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who yesterday visited the interagency fire center in Boise. “The fires sweeping the West are proof that federal forest and fire policy are broken.”

Absolutely broken. Thank you Senator Wyden! Now what would fix it?

Chris Topik, who directs the Nature Conservancy’s Restoring America’s Forests program and is a former aide on the House subcommittee that funds wildfire suppression, said it was “chilling” that Tidwell had ordered the field to stop spending money.

“This is a mess, as forecast,” Topik said. “It shows that we need to get serious about investing in the restoration work that reduces fire risk. We need to get serious about a new way of funding suppression.”

Topik said he anticipates that the Interior Department within the next 10 days will also have to start borrowing money from other programs to shore up its wildfire budget.

He said the Forest Service already has canceled official trips to Salt Lake City next week for a federal advisory committee meeting on forest planning.

The agency will “just not be doing much,” Topik said. “This is 8 percent of America. It’s not trivial.”

“Will Congress pay it back?” Topik added. “I hope so.”

Thank you, Chris, it’s time folks got fired up (sts) about this. Even if the FS folks manage to get back some of the fire borrowing borrowed money..well it’s next year and a hassle to distribute, and a unit might end up getting nothing depending on who gets their hands on it before it gets to you, and what crises next year brings.

Note that Chris says Interior will start doing the same thing.

10 thoughts on “Chief orders spending freeze to siphon money toward fighting fires”

  1. Yes, scientifically speaking,”‘the fires sweeping the West are proof that federal forest and fire policy are broken,” as well as Federal policy more generally — in the area of climate change mitigation.

    Global climate change and the repetitive atypical dryness is is causing across many landscapes are the strongest correlations to increased wildfire.

    Not forest management, recent or historical. Remember, even grasslands burn when the conditions are right!

    Reply
    • Kevin: I have been studying the history of wildfires in the western US for several decades, focusing on the years 1800 to the present. Current dryness is hardly “atypical” (check out the 1930s for one well known example), and global climate change seems to have nothing to do with it. It is telling that the increase in wildfires is mostly focused on federal lands and that more than 20 years ago many people were predicting these results due to passive management policies, beginning with unprecedented Wilderness designations in the late 1960s and continuing through current “let it burn” policies today. It is a fuels problem, not a climate problem, no matter your beliefs or statements. Weather patterns have changed very little in the past 200 years in the western US, and fire seasons have typically occurred during the same months in the same places.

      Reply
      • With ideas like “dead trees don’t burn any more intensely than live trees” and “more trees are better”, it is no surprise that wildfires are such an issue. We should not be “preserving wildfires” and saving snags, as “some people” want. Yes, this is all a part of the “whatever happens” strategy, sacrificing the present for the dubious promise of a “balanced future forest”. I am confident that we could “sculpt” current forests, using a wide variety of techniques, into the healthy and diverse forests that fit into a human-dominated world. Fixing “climate change” won’t save our western National Forests.

        Reply
        • I don’t think anyone has claimed “fixing” climate change is going to stop wildfires or beetles or any other natural disturbance events. I also don’t think anyone believes a “fix” would be or could be something that happens quickly, as in just a couple years. But that doesn’t mean the role of climate change in wildfire occurrences and how we respond to wildfire over the coming years (decades?) should be ignored or downplayed. I’d prefer the public and federal land managers (and the holders of various purse strings) be fully informed in order to develop policies that take into account every factor, both short and long-term.

          Reply
          • Your comment got me started trying to find something to summarize many of the discussions and research reports I’ve heard.. people are thinking about it. So I put what I found in a separate post here.

            Reply
  2. Yes, scientifically speaking, “the fires sweeping the West are proof that federal forest and fire policy are broken,” as well as Federal policy more generally — in the area of climate change mitigation.

    Global climate change and the repetitive atypical dryness it is causing across many landscapes are the strongest correlations to increased wildfire.

    Not forest management, recent or historical. Remember, even grasslands burn when the conditions are right!

    Reply
    • PS Many grasslands used to be burned almost every year, and the conditions are always right when the grasses have dried out and someone or something ignites them. Speaking as a scientist who studies this very topic.

      Reply
  3. If you need more money to do fuels reduction projects and restoration projects why not make them economically viable through the sale of wood products, be it marketable timber or large scale fire wood or pulpwood production. I think the markets are there, the federal agencies just have to put the minds to it. I know they love to have projects that cost money but they really need to learn how to have projects that create economy for everyone. It really wouldn’t be that difficult.

    Reply
      • Travis: There is no line between thinning and logging, except economics. One time my crews and I did a “precommercial thinning” on 40-year old hemlock on Weyerhaeuser ground in western Washington. Many of these trees were of merchantable size, but too far from market to profitably log. Otherwise, it would have been a commercial thinning. Many of our remaining stands of old-growth (200-years and older trees) in the Pacific Northwest will be killed by competition and/or bugs and/or wildfire in the coming years — just as has been taking place this week and in the past several decades — if they aren’t thinned. Some of the stands in western Oregon feature trees 5 t0 10 feet in diameter that are being crowded out of existence by trees 24 to 36 inches in diameter. If you truly want to “save” the old-growth, these stands need to be seriously thinned, and the sooner the better. Doing so would produce numerous jobs and lots of money that could be used to thin lesser diameter stands. There is no need for subsidy, just well designed projects of an appropriate scale with available markets.

        Reply

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