GRANTS PASS, Ore. – A federal audit says the U.S. Forest Service should let more wildfires burn and demand that state and local governments pick up a bigger share of firefighting costs that regularly top $1 billion a year.
The audit released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general said Forest Service personnel feel that protecting private property where cities meet forests, known as the wildland-urban interface, accounts for more than half of Forest Service firefighting costs, which have exceeded $1 billion in three of the past six years.
Produced at the request of the Forest Service, the audit said that by picking up so much of the cost of fighting wildfires, the Forest Service was taking away incentives for homeowners to take responsibility for protecting their homes in the woods.
And because state and local governments control development in the wildland-urban interface, they should bear a greater share of the costs, the audit added.
“We are pleased with the results and hope to have all the recommendations in place for the 2007 fire season,” Forest Service spokeswoman Jennifer Plyler said from Washington, D.C. “It’s something we looked at and felt we needed some outside help to decide how to approach it.”
Many Western forests evolved with fire, but the Forest Service has long put out all the fires it could, despite recognizing for many years that this led to an unnatural buildup of fuels that has increased the size and severity of wildfires.
The audit said current Forest Service policy calls for giving equal consideration to putting out fires and letting them burn to reduce buildups of brush and small trees, but outside pressure and a lack of trained personnel make it difficult to choose to let fires burn. The audit noted that only 2 percent of wildfires from 1998 through 2005 were allowed to burn for ecological benefit.
The audit urged the Forest Service to train more personnel to assess and monitor wildfires for the practice known as wildland fire use, and hold wildfire incident commanders and line officers accountable for controlling costs.
The Forest Service also should ask Congress to decide who has primary responsibility for protecting homes in the woods, and if that turns out to be the states, renegotiate its firefighting agreements with them.
Bill Lafferty, fire program manager for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said one reason the Forest Service was created in 1910 was to fight wildfires that were destroying whole towns.
Mike Carrier, natural resources adviser to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, objected to the idea of states paying a greater share when they already spend millions on protecting private property from wildfires. He said the underlying problem remains the huge buildup of forest fuels.
Andy Stahl of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics agreed that more wildfires should be allowed to burn, but disagreed that protecting homes was driving up costs.
The Wilderness Society has been urging the Forest Service for years to let more fires burn and supports many of the recommendations, but how much they can reduce firefighting costs is anybody’s guess, said wildfire policy analyst Jaelith Hall-Rivera.
“Apparently the main reason the Forest Service has not been doing this is it feels the states object to it – concerns about fires escaping and smoke,” she said. “You have to have a balance of what is ecologically appropriate with what will help you reduce suppression costs.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
