Idaho Mountain Express - Fed Acts on Wildfire Preparedness

News Article

By Greg Moore

Efforts to address the upcoming wildfire season are already under way in Congress and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

On Jan. 8, Reps. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, and Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., reintroduced H.R. 167, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. The bill aims to fund activities to suppress large fires so that the Forest Service and BLM do not have to draw money from fire-prevention programs. A spokesman for the office of Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said Crapo and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., plan to reintroduce their identical bill in the Senate early next month.

Last year, the bills were co-sponsored by nearly 150 members of Congress and supported by a broad coalition of more than 300 organizations, but did not make it out of committee to be voted on by the full House or Senate.

"There are a number of steps that we need to take to address forest health and management issues, but fixing the wildfire suppression budget must be the first one," Simpson said in a press release. "Until we address this issue, anything we do to increase needed management activities in the forests, like hazardous fuels removal, timber harvest, conservation or trail maintenance, will continue to be lost in fire transfers."

The bill would budget for catastrophic wildfires in the same way that responses to other natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes are funded. Routine wildland firefighting costs, which make up about 70 percent of the cost of wildfire suppression, would be funded through the normal budgeting and appropriations process. Very large fires, which represent about 1 percent of wildland fires but make up 30 percent of costs, would be funded under existing disaster programs.

"The way we currently budget for fire is costing taxpayers and destroying our forests," Simpson said. "Passing this legislation will have a significant and long-term impact on both our public lands and on our budget, allowing us to finally budget responsibly for wildfire suppression in a way that ultimately decreases firefighting costs by mitigating fire risk and making us better prepared for and more resilient against future fires."

Also early this month, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell issued a secretarial order establishing a top-level Rangeland Fire Task Force charged with designing a comprehensive fire-management plan for the Western United States. The Department of the Interior includes the BLM, which manages more than 12 million acres of publicly-owned rangeland in Idaho.

According to a press release from the department, the strategy will address protecting rural communities, sagebrush landscapes and habitats essential to the conservation of sage-grouse and other wildlife. The task force will look at what actions can be implemented prior to the 2015 fire season and at longer-term actions that might be implemented beginning in 2016.

The task force will work with other federal agencies, states, tribes, local entities and non-governmental groups on fire management and habitat restoration activities. That includes enhancing the capability and capacity of fire management organizations through improved and expanded education and training, the department stated. The task force also will encourage improved coordination among all partners involved in rangeland fire management.

The group will be chaired by department Deputy Secretary Mike Connor, and include five assistant secretaries. It will have reporting dates for progressively more detailed direction beginning Feb. 1 and March 1, with a final report due May 1.

The secretarial order does not provide additional funding. However, for fiscal 2015, Congress appropriated $896.8 million for the Department of the Interior's wildland fire management program, including $10 million to reduce hazardous fuels. That money will help support efforts to protect and restore sage-grouse habitat, the department stated.

"Targeted action is urgently needed to conserve habitat for the greater sage-grouse and other wildlife in the Great Basin, as well as to maintain ranching and recreation economies that depend on sagebrush landscapes," Jewell said.

The department said the order was based partly on a conference it hosted in Boise in early November that brought together scientists and land managers from state and federal agencies to find ways to protect sage-grouse habitat from wildfire.

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