The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has spent more than $2 billion fighting fires this year for the first time ever, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the new record is evidence of a troubling pattern in spending priorities for the agency.
“Forest Service spending on fire suppression in recent years has gone from 15 percent of the budget to 55 percent – or maybe even more – which means we have to keep borrowing from funds that are intended for forest management,” Perdue said in a statement. “We end up having to hoard all of the money that is intended for fire prevention, because we’re afraid we’re going to need it to actually fight fires.”
Every year, the USFS designates part of its budget to firefighting. The amount set aside is figured by taking the average of firefighting costs over the past 10 years, however, because costs have been steadily rising, the emergency fire fund set aside is short more often than not.
This year, Congress appropriated $1.6 billion extra specifically for fire suppression, but it was not enough to cover the total cost. The USFS still shifted funds from other agency responsibilities to cover excess costs.
“It means we can’t do the prescribed burning, harvesting, or insect control to prevent leaving a fuel load in the forest for future fires to feed on,” Perdue said. “That’s wrong, and that’s no way to manage the Forest Service.”
Over seven million acres of land have burned this year, making 2017 one of the most destructive fire seasons to date, but not unexpected. A trend of worsening fire seasons has developed over decades of poor land management, the Billings Gazette reports.
Timber harvesting on federal lands promotes healthy forest growth while removing fire fuel from the environment. The industry has shrunk, however, as federal protections on endangered species and lower demand has led to less logging.
While forests aren’t being artificially thinned through logging, federal policy for decades has been to snuff out wildfires as soon as possible, leading to a buildup of combustible material that feeds “megafires” that burn more than 156 square miles, according to the Billings Gazette.
“We’ve allowed forests to develop that never developed naturally,” Oregon State University in Corvallis professor of fire management John Bailey told the Billings Gazette. “as a result, we have longer and hotter fire seasons that drive these megafires,”
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