USDA, DOI, and OMB Urge Congress to Fix the Fire Budget

Press Release

On the heels of a notification Monday from USDA to Congress of the need to transfer an additional $250 million to cover wildfire suppression costs for the remainder of the year, Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, and the White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan sent a joint letter to Congress requesting they act to change the way the nation pays for wildfire costs so that we can continue to adequately invest in forest and rangeland restoration, and make lands less vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire and more resilient.

Since 2000, fire seasons have grown longer, and the frequency, size and severity of wildland fires has increased. The cost of the U.S. Forest Service's wildfire suppression reached a record $243 million in a one-week period during the height of suppression activity last month. With a record 52 percent of the Forest Service's budget dedicated to fighting wildfire, compared to just 16 percent in 1995, the Forest Service's firefighting budget has been exhausted, forcing USDA to transfer funds away from forest restoration projects that would help reduce the risk of future fires, in order to cover the high cost of battling today's blazes. Monday's transfer was the third this year bringing the total to $700 million.

While the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior are able to suppress or manage 98 percent of fires with allocated funds, catastrophic megafires burn through the agency's financial resources. One to two percent of fires consume 30 percent or more of total actual annual fire suppression dollars.

"Restoring resilient forests helps to protect against future fire outbreaks and is vital to minimizing long-term costs to lives, private and public properties, and to struggling rural economies. Under the current budget structure we are forced to abandon these critical restoration and capital improvement projects in order to suppress these few but extreme fires" Vilsack said. "The President's budget solution, similar to the proposed Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, takes a common sense approach and treats these events like other natural disasters."

The Forest Service transferred funds in seven of the last 14 years, while in six of the last 14 years, DOI had to transfer funds.

The costs of wildfire preparedness and suppression now account for 76 percent of the DOI wildfire management program budget and, as in the case of the Forest Service, reduce the amounts of funds available for fuels management and restoration efforts. These activities are essential for reducing risks of catastrophic fires, increasing the resiliency of lands to recover from fire, and to protect communities and infrastructure.

"The rising costs of fighting wildfires come at the expense of other programs that reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, increase the ability of our lands to recover from fire, and help protect communities and infrastructure," said Jewell. "The President's budget and a bipartisan group in Congress recognize this and have a commonsense solution -- treat catastrophic wildfires like the natural disasters they are. Congress can stop this perpetual downward spiral that each year increases fire risk, and jeopardizes critical resources that support prevention and recovery efforts."

The Administration proposes that DOI and the Forest Service would be able to access a discretionary disaster cap adjustment after the amount spent on fire suppression exceeds 70 percent of the 10-year average. This is mirrored in the proposed bipartisan Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (WDFA) which is budget neutral and also has broad stakeholder support.

This approach allows the agencies to invest additional resources in forest and rangeland restoration and management. In the case of the Forest Service, it would increase acres treated by 1 million acres annually and increase timber outputs by 300 million board feet annually. In the Department of the Interior, it would increase the number of acres treated annually by 500,000 acres and help protect public lands such as the sage steppe ecosystem.

The letter points out that the alternative House-passed Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015, H.R. 2647 is incompatible with the Federal government's natural disaster management needs because it does not address the long-term shift in the Forest Service's budget and the escalating percent of the Forest Service budget devoted to fire suppression.

"We urgently need to address the runaway growth of fire suppression at the cost of other critical programs - instead of leaving our agencies and the States scrambling to plug budget gaps while they are literally putting out fires," Donovan said. "There is bipartisan support for the President's proposal to change the way we budget for fire suppression. The time to act is now."

Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970. The U.S. burns twice as many acres as three decades ago and Forest Service scientists believe the acreage burned may double again by mid-century. USDA, DOI and OMB are asking for a fix in time for the challenges that lie ahead. Both the President's budget proposal and WDFA provide real support to the long-term impacts of increasing wildfires.

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