SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Forest Service issued a report Wednesday saying that for the first time in its history it was spending more than half of its $5 billion annual budget battling wildfires, and the toll will only get bigger in years to come
With the increased emphasis on fighting fires, programs that help prevent blazes, such as forest restoration and watershed and landscape management, will continue to suffer, Forest Service officials said.
The report suggested that instead of treating catastrophic wildfires “as a normal agency expense, we must treat them more like other natural disasters, such as tornadoes and hurricanes.”
“These factors are causing the cost of fighting fires to rise every year, and there is no end in sight,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “The release of this report is very timely based on the current hectic pace of wildfires in this country. We have been pointing out this challenge for the past few years, but we have not been able to effectively address it through our current budget process. It is important to keep the focus on this problem, ensure the discussion continues, and a solution to the funding problem be found.”
The Forest Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said the cost of battling wildfires made up only 16 percent of the Forest Service’s budget in 1995. Now, the agency is spending about 52 percent of its budget on fighting fires.
But under current funding structures, that figure could balloon to 67 percent and the agency would be expected to absorb those costs as part of its regular budget. Fire staffing has doubled over the past 20 years, but staffing levels have plummeted 39 percent for those dedicated to managing forest system lands.
Meanwhile, the report projects annual wildland blazes to double by 2050.
“As more and more of the agency’s resources are spent each year to provide the firefighters, aircraft and other assets necessary to protect lives, property and natural resources from catastrophic wildfires, fewer and fewer funds and resources are available to support other agency work — including the very programs and restoration projects that reduce the fire threat,” the report says.
The report noted that fire seasons are 78 days longer than in the 1970s and that since 2000, at least 10 states have had their largest fires on record.
“If you’re a person in San Francisco or L.A. that actually spends a lot of time in the forest recreating, or you care about the water you drink, because most of your water in California comes from National Forest land — the headwaters — we have less resources to protect recreational assets, trails,” Robert Bonnie, undersecretary for natural resources and environment at the Department of Agriculture, said in an interview.
“We have less resources to do watershed restoration,” Bonnie said. “All those other things that people care about, we have less money for.”