Wildland Fire Management: Federal Agencies Have Taken Important Steps Forward, but Additiona, Strategic Action Is needed to Capitalize on Those Steps

This Government Accountability Office Report (GAO-09-877) dated September 2009 finds that the Forest Service and the Interior agencies have improved their understanding of wildland fire’s ecological role on the landscape and have taken important steps toward enhancing their ability to cost-effectively protect communities and resources.

However, much work remains. GAO has recommended several key actions—including development of an overarching fire management strategy—that, if completed, would substantially improve the agencies’ management of wildland fire. Nonetheless, the agencies have yet to:
• Develop a cohesive strategy laying out various potential approaches for addressing the growing wildland fire threat, estimated costs associated with each approach, and the trade-offs involved. Such information would help the agencies and Congress make fundamental decisions about an effective and affordable approach to responding to fires.
• Establish a cost-containment strategy that clarifies the importance of containing costs relative to other, often-competing objectives. Without such clarification, GAO believes managers in the field lack a clear understanding of the relative importance that the agencies’ leadership places on containing costs and are therefore likely to continue to select firefighting strategies without duly considering the costs of suppression.
• Clarify financial responsibilities for fires that cross federal, state, and local
jurisdictions. Unless the financial responsibilities for multijurisdictional fires are clarified, concerns that the existing framework insulates nonfederal entities from the cost of protecting the wildland-urban interface—and that the federal government would therefore continue to bear more than its share of the cost—are unlikely to be addressed.
• Take action to mitigate the effects of rising fire costs on other agency programs. The sharply rising costs of managing wildland fires have led the agencies to transfer funds from other programs to help pay for fire suppression, disrupting or delaying activities in these other programs.
• Better methods of predicting needed suppression funding could reduce
the need to transfer funds from other programs.

Wildland Fire Management: Federal Agencies Have Taken Important Steps Forward, but Additional Action Is Needed to Address Remaining Challenges

This Government Accountability Office Testimony (GAO-09-906T) dated July 21, 2009 states that:

The Forest Service and Interior agencies have taken important steps toward enhancing their ability to protect communities and resources by seeking to (1) make communities and resources less susceptible to being damaged by wildland fire and (2) respond to fire so as to protect communities and important resources at risk while also considering both the cost and long-term effects of that response.

Despite the agencies’ efforts, much work remains. GAO has previously recommended several key actions that, if completed, would substantially improve the agencies’ management of wildland fire. Specifically, the agencies should:

•Develop a cohesive strategy laying out various potential approaches for addressing the growing wildland fire threat.

•Establish a cost-containment strategy that clarifies the importance of containing costs relative to other, often-competing objectives.

•Clarify financial responsibilities for fires that cross federal, state, and local jurisdictions.

•Take action to mitigate the effects of rising fire costs on other agency programs.

Wildland Fire Management: Actions by Federal Agencies and Congress Could Mitigate Rising Fire Costs and Their Effect on Other Agency Programs

This tesitmony by Robin M. Nazzaro, Director Natural Resources and Environment, published as Government Accountability Office Report (GAO-09-444T) dated April 6, 2009 states that sharply rising costs of managing wildland fires have led the Forest Service and Interior agencies to transfer funds from other programs to help pay for fire suppression and, according to agency officials and others, may also be reducing the total funds available to agency programs unrelated to fire.

As GAO has reported, there are several steps the agencies could take, and actions Congress could consider, that could mitigate the rising costs of wildland fire management and its effect on the agencies’ other programs.

>Although the agencies have, among other actions, improved decision-support tools for helping officials select appropriate strategies for fighting individual wildland fires, the agencies continue to lack both an agencywide strategy for containing fire suppression costs and a broader long-term wildland fire management strategy that identifies options, along with associated funding, for reducing excess vegetation and responding to fires—what GAO has termed a cohesive strategy.

>The agencies could develop a better method of estimating the suppression funds requested, as GAO recommended in 2004. Better estimates in a given year could reduce the likelihood that the agencies would need to transfer funds from other accounts, yet the agencies continue to use an estimation method with known problems.

>In addition, Congress may wish to consider establishing a reserve account to fund emergency wildland firefighting, which could reduce the need for the agencies to transfer funds. The advantages and disadvantages of several alternative funding approaches were discussed in GAO’s 2004 report. Congress considered at least two bills in 2008 proposing establishment of a reserve account, but neither bill passed. One of those bills was reintroduced in March 2009.