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Money and Forests to Burn

February 15, 2007

Like the lowlands in the hurricane-prone Southeast, the fire-prone forests in the Intermountain West are being transformed by rapid development.

The Forest Service is turning into the de facto fire department for communities of dream homes sprawling into once-remote woodlands. That trend is starting to cost the taxpayers a pretty penny. Both Republican and Democratic members of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which reviewed the proposed 2008 Forest Service budget on February 13, don’t like that a bit.

Congressman John Peterson (R-PA) said fire costs are crowding out land management programs. “It’s insanity,” he complained. Congressman Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) pointed out the lack of policies at local and state levels to get a handle on sprawling growth in the woody exurbs.

Since 1990, more than 8 million homes have been built in what’s called the “wildland-urban interface” (WUI) -- where flammable homes meet forests that have burned since time immemorial.

Last year, nearly 10 million acres of national forests caught fire. The U.S. Forest Service spent $2 billion trying to put fires out. Fifty to 95 percent of the cost of suppressing big fires comes from protecting property in the wildlands-urban interface, according to a recent report from the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency.

Hard questions arise about the responsibility of property owners who choose to build expensive dwellings in fire-prone forests, and of the local governments that allow such risky land use patterns to expand.

Fire is a normal and often beneficial occurrence in many Western forest ecosystems. Thick-barked ponderosa pine trees, for example, are well adapted to low-intensity fires. High-elevation lodgepole pine stands depend on fire to break open their cones and release seeds for the next generation.

With homes nestled amidst the trees, however, fires that could be allowed to burn in uninhabited backcountry are attacked aggressively to prevent homes from being incinerated.

The housing growth trend is likely to continue. Forest products companies that own vast tracts of woodlands near national forests are unloading or developing acreage that can turn a bigger profit as residential real estate than as working timberland. Between 2004 and 2006, Plum Creek Timber Co., for example, reported selling more than 700,000 acres for development, nearly 10 percent of its holdings.

The Department of Agriculture IG report said that local and state governments need to ante up more of the costs of protecting residential property from fire.

The IG report also recommended letting more fires burn to achieve ecological benefits, but the Forest Service lacks sufficient qualified fire managers. So, the default choice is to suppress.

Congress will have to step in to clarify who pays what share of the costs of protecting property in the wildlands-urban interface. If more fires are to be allowed to burn, the Forest Service will have to ask Congress for the money needed to hire qualified fire bosses.

Otherwise, the costs of wildland fire suppression will continue rising – as if the taxpayers have money to burn.