Western lawmakers are pushing for Congress to address funding and management challenges at the U.S. Forest Service as the government struggles to respond to an extreme year for wildfires.
Democrats and Republicans representing states affected by wildfires say the problem demands the same attention as recent hurricanes, as fires have become larger, more frequent, deadlier and costlier, forcing the Forest Service to borrow from other government accounts when money runs out.
“This year’s devastating fires across the West underscore the urgency of fixing the current, broken system of wildfire funding,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told the Washington Examiner. “Fixing fire borrowing and providing the Forest Service with the funding it needs to prevent and put out wildfires is a bipartisan idea and has been from the beginning.”
But lawmakers disagree on how to address the funding problem, with some Republicans pushing for any fix to be matched by forest management reforms that they say will address the root causes of fires and prevent them from being started in the first place.
“By returning responsible management practices to our forests, we will improve forest health, reduce escalating suppression costs and lower the risk of catastrophic wildfire threatening communities and the environment,” Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “Over the long term, new funding without the management component is futile.”
The Natural Resources Committee’s oversight subcommittee is holding a hearing Wednesday afternoon to discuss how to respond to a wildfire season that has burned more than 8 million acres, about 2.5 million more than in an average year, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.
The severe year for wildfires comes after more than 10 million acres burned in 2015, the worst fire season in decades.
But this year’s fires are different, and more urgent, because fires are increasingly burning close to homes and people as the West becomes more populated.
From California to Utah and Montana, thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes this fire season.
The largest wildfire in Los Angeles history this month forced hundreds of residents to evacuate, with the fire burning more than 5,000 acres.
Robert Bonnie, who was the Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment in the Obama administration, says the human element is one of a confluence of factors that have increased the cost of firefighting response.
“In the past, everybody thought fire was a bad thing, so we put out all these small fires, which built up fuel levels in forests,” Bonnie told the Washington Examiner. “Throw in climate change, longer fire seasons, and millions of houses being built in the Western landscape, and that has made firefighting more expensive.”
As costs have risen, Congress has tried for years to fix the funding mechanism for fighting forest fires but has failed to find consensus.
This month, Wyden introduced legislation with four Democratic and four Republican co-sponsors that would allow the Forest Service to use disaster relief funding once the original money dedicated to fighting fires runs out.
Under current law, forest fires are not treated the same as other disasters such as hurricanes. That forces the Forest Service to take money from accounts dedicated to preventative maintenance, such as clearing underbrush.
In 1995, the Forest Service, which is the largest agency that responds to wildfires, spent about one-sixth of its budget on wildfires. Today, it regularly spends more than half of its $5 billion annual budget on firefighting.
“I will keep pushing Congress to pass our bipartisan bill to end fire borrowing, stop the Forest Service from becoming the ‘Fire Service’ and start treating wildfires like the natural disasters they are,” Wyden told the Washington Examiner.
But some Republicans won’t fix the funding problem without adopting what they call “preventative” reforms.
Bishop supports legislation introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., that addresses the funding issue, allowing extreme wildfires to qualify for money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The bill differs from Wyden’s by allowing the Forest Service to thin trees in forests that are 10,000 acres or less without having to go through certain environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The Forest Service could then more quickly pursue what are known as “forest management projects,” in which the agency removes dead or dying timber and sell it to mills, and then can use the proceeds to care for the forests and make them more resilient to wildfires.
Westerman’s bill passed the House Natural Resources Committee in June, and a previous version of it passed the full House with the support of 20 Democrats before dying in the Senate.
Westerman, a licensed forester who has a master’s degree in forestry from Yale University, says his bill will preserve the national forests and treat them as a “treasured resource.”
“The proposal we have put out addresses the root problem with forest fires, that we have seen an increase of forest fires as we have a decreased the level of management of federal land,” Westerman told the Washington Examiner. “There are a lot of benefits that come with healthy forests, and it’s really sad we are not managing better them better.”
Opponents to Westerman’s approach say his bill weakens environmental reviews too much and encourages litigation against the Forest Service.
Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, said wildfires are “getting worse” because of climate change, meaning members should solve the funding issue quickly.
“We need to fully fund wildfires, not clear-cut more forests,” Grijalva said.
Wyden and Bishop’s offices say they are pressing leaders in Congress to include their firefighting provisions as part of upcoming must-pass legislation, such as disaster funding for Puerto Rico or appropriation committee spending bills.
Bonnie worries that because the proposals are so different, Congress will struggle to provide consensus, and fail to act.
He said that while he supports certain forest management projects that are collaborative and consider local interests, the Forest Service already has the authority to pursue projects quickly when it needs to.
He encourages lawmakers to fix the funding problem first.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to reduce paperwork to get things done if you don’t fix the budget,” Bonnie said. “If you make investments in restoration now, over the long term, the fire threat will subside because we got ahead of it. It’s not that there won’t be fire. There will be fire. But you will be able to control it.”
