There was an interesting story in the WaPo over the weekend, which included links to a Grassroots Wildland Firefighters’ analysis of FACTS data (wouldn’t it be nice if the data were more accessible and folks like Grassroots didn’t have to hire outside folks to get it (the Peoples’ Database!).
I was curious about the data.. as we know many IRA bucks (or IRA and BIL bucks? we never really found out) were given to partners to do this kind of work. So how might that balance out with the loss of personnel? And many of us have seen many acres of prescribed fire happening in October that doesn’t appear to match up with the numbers on this chart.
In Grassroots’ report,
Now, with the federal government shutdown for the foreseeable future there is little chance that the USFS will be able to close the enormous wildfire mitigation gap before the end of the year.
But the Forest Service is actually burning quite a bit despite the shutdown, as we have seen the smoke and are frequently getting notifications about from their information folks.
OK, sure it could be less than the last few years and fewer employees (plus possibly having spent the BIL and IRA funding.. doesn’t help. Shouldn’t there be a bump at some point based on that infusion? Where should that occur? Back to the report.
Between CY2021 and CY2024, the Forest Service completed hazardous fuels projects on an average of about 3.6 million acres of USFS managed land per year. In the first nine months of CY2025, less than 1.7 million acres were treated.
They included this helpful table:
The 1.7 mill is the total and the Grassroots Report seems to be saying that in the shutdown no more will get done, which we know not to be true. So we don’t know what the sum of October, November and December will be.
We can see from the second chart that (not surprisingly) that most PF and MT accomplishments are in spring, winter and fall (the charts for MF are not included here, I don’t know where they could be found, but I am curious). So there is a sizeable chunk not done or reported yet. I guess we could model some “what ifs” but why not wait until we get the real numbers?
Now, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if FACTS accomplishments were actually down due to removal of human beings from the workforce. This seems likely. So I’m not arguing that it isn’t true, but let’s look at the data a little closer. First let’s look at the acres treated by month chart (or is it a graph?) It looks like fall, spring and winter are the key moths for PF and MT. Except for 2021, when there was a lot going on in July (?). March is the biggest month and that was way down this year, in fact, February, March and April. Conceivably those projects were ready to go (planned) and the warm bodies weren’t on board to implement. But if so, who were those folks? Temporaries? Probationary employees? Maybe we can figure it out by looking at the Regions.
Hmm. Region 2 and part of Region 4 (Utah) are doing exceptionally well. Note that the comparison is not September to September across the years. So actually Utah looks like its on its way to exceeding previous years.. making the same assumptions about what months are best for PF work. It would be interesting to see this broken out by PF and MT (back to The Peoples’ Database). Did fewer employees leave Utah, Colorado and Wyoming? Did they have the greatest amount in external grants for this work? Did they have a different mix of what kind of employees and contractors they use to do the work?
Maybe some Regions lost the folks who knew how to enter info into FACTS?
Or were the folks prepping the work redirected to timber sales without a fuel treatment component (that seems unlikely, depending on how the purpose and need is rationalized)?
Back to the WaPo story.. I appreciate that the reporter included this view:
The figures could be skewed because of a lag in recordkeeping, given the shutdown and the busy time of year, said Camille Stevens-Rumann, an associate professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University.
“It probably wouldn’t change the trend,” she added. “But it might change the hard numbers.”
I’m interested in any local observations that might explain some of these data, especially what appear to be State or Regional differences.
According to the story,
The chief attributed the recent reduction in prescribed fire across the country to “operational challenges.” Major blazes nationwide and dry conditions limited controlled burns, he said — as did the need to send resources to Canada in the late spring and early summer. Canada saw its second-biggest fire season on record this year.
“The continued high level of fire activity and extreme conditions in the West are requiring significant resources and personnel,” said Schultz, “which has constrained our capacity to treat additional acres.”
I would urge a bit of caution looking at FACTS numbers. While it has been a couple of years since I left my fuels position at the Forest Service, there was (and i believe still is) a lot of creative ways to produce these numbers. For example, if you thin,pile, and burn the piles, on one acre, FACTS will report that as three acres accomplished. Grazing, herbicide treatments, trail maintenance all are good tools, but sometimes the reporting can be a bit inovative..
I hope there will be continued discussion about a better measure of effective fuels treatments that looks at near and long term benefits.
Yes, indeed folks have been questioning that way of keeping track and asking for standardization for some time,
It’s possible that the modelers will ask for modeled answers (the FS was going to do this under the rubric of “outcome-based”).
It is in the current version of FOFA as far as I can tell. I will post that separately.