Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on Interior, 

Environment and Related Agencies, 

Committee on Appropriations, House of 

Representatives

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 10:00 a.m. EDT 

Thursday, July 14, 2005 WILDLAND FIRE 

MANAGEMENT 

Timely Identification of 

Long-Term Options and 

Funding Needs Is Critical 

Statement of Robert A. Robinson, Managing Director 

Natural Resources and Environment 

GAO-05-923T 
 

 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-923T.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Robert A. 

Robinson at (202) 512-3841 or 

robinsonr@gao.gov, or Robin M. Nazzaro at 

(202) 512-3841 or nazzaror@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-05-923T, a testimony 

before the Subcommittee on Interior, 

Environment and Related Agencies, 

Committee on Appropriations, House of 

Representatives 

July 14, 2005

WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT

Timely Identification of Long-Term 

Options and Funding Needs Is Critical 

Wildland fires are increasingly 

threatening communities and 

ecosystems. In recent years, these 

fires have become more intense 

due to excess vegetation that has 

accumulated, partly as a result of 

past management practices. 

Experts have said that the window 

of opportunity for effectively 

responding to wildland fire is 

rapidly closing. 

The federal government’s cost to 

manage wildland fires continues to 

increase. Appropriations for its 

wildland fire management activities 

tripled from about $1 billion in 

fiscal year 1999 to nearly $3 billion 

in fiscal year 2005. 

This testimony discusses the 

federal government’s progress over 

the past 5 years and future 

challenges in managing wildland 

fires. It is based primarily on GAO’s 

report: Wildland Fire 

Management: Important Progress 

Has Been Made, but Challenges 

Remain to Completing a Cohesive 

Strategy (GAO-05-147, Jan. 14, 

2005). 

In its report, GAO recommended 

that the Secretaries of Agriculture 

and of the Interior develop a plan 

for completing a cohesive strategy 

that identifies options and funding 

needed to address wildland fire 

problems. The agencies agreed 

with GAO’s recommendation and 

expect to develop such a plan by 

August 2005. 

Over the last 5 years, the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture 

and land management agencies in the Department of the Interior, working 

with the Congress, have made important progress in responding to wildland 

fires. Most notably, the agencies have adopted various national strategy 

documents addressing the need to reduce wildland fire risks, established a 

priority to protect communities in the wildland-urban interface, and 

increased efforts and amounts of funding committed to addressing wildland 

fire problems, including preparedness, suppression, and fuel reduction on 

federal lands. In addition, the agencies have begun improving their data and 

research on wildland fire problems, made progress in developing longneeded fire management plans that identify actions for effectively addressing

wildland fire threats at the local level, and improved federal interagency 

coordination and collaboration with nonfederal partners. The agencies also 

have strengthened overall accountability for their investments in wildland 

fire activities by establishing improved performance measures and a 

framework for monitoring results. 

Despite producing numerous planning and strategy documents, the agencies 

have yet to develop a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the longterm options and related funding needed to reduce the excess vegetation 

that fuels fires in national forests and rangelands. Reducing these fuels 

lowers risks to communities and ecosystems and helps contain suppression 

costs. As GAO noted in 1999, such a strategy would help the agencies and 

the Congress to determine the most effective and affordable long-term 

approach for addressing wildland fire problems. Completing this strategy 

will require finishing several efforts now under way, each with its own 

challenges. The agencies will need to finish planned improvements in a key 

data and modeling system—LANDFIRE—to more precisely identify the 

extent and location of wildland fire threats and to better target fuel 

reduction efforts. In implementing LANDFIRE, the agencies will need more 

consistent approaches to assessing wildland fire risks, more integrated 

information systems, and better understanding of the role of climate in 

wildland fire. In addition, local fire management plans will need to be 

updated with data from LANDFIRE and from emerging agency research on 

more cost-effective approaches to reducing fuels. Completing a new system 

designed to identify the most cost-effective means for allocating fire 

management budget resources—Fire Program Analysis—may help to better 

identify long-term options and related funding needs. Without completing 

these tasks, the agencies will have difficulty determining the extent and 

location of wildland fire threats, targeting and coordinating their efforts and 

resources, and resolving wildland fire problems in the most timely and costeffective manner over the long term. 
Page 1 GAO-05-923T 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the status of the federal 

government’s efforts to address our nation’s wildland fire problems. 

Wildland fire is a natural process that plays an important role in the health 

of many fire-adapted ecosystems, but it also can cause catastrophic 

damage to communities and ecosystems. The trend of increasing wildland 

fire threats to communities and ecosystems that we reported on 5 years 

ago has continued. 1 The average acreage of lands burned by wildland fires 

annually from 2000 through 2004 was about 62 percent greater than the 

average amount burned annually during the 1990s. Experts have noted that 

catastrophic damage from wildland fires probably will continue to 

increase until an adequate long-term federal response is implemented. 

They stated that efforts to resolve the growing threats of catastrophic 

wildland fires are in a race against time and the window of opportunity is 

rapidly closing. 

My testimony today summarizes the findings of our January 2005 report, 

which discusses the progress the federal government has made over the 

last 5 years and key challenges it faces in developing and implementing a 

long-term response to wildland fire problems.2

 This report is based 

primarily on over 25 reviews we conducted in recent years of federal 

wildland fire management that focused largely on the activities of the 

Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and the land management 

agencies in the Department of the Interior, which together manage about 

95 percent of all federal lands. 

In the past 5 years, the federal government has made important progress in 

putting into place the basic components of a framework for managing and 

responding to the nation’s wildland fire problems, including 

• establishing a priority to protect communities near wildlands—called the 

wildland-urban interface; 

 1

GAO, Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy Is Needed to Address Catastrophic 

Wildfire Threats, GAO/RCED-99-65 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 2, 1999)

2

GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges 

Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy, GAO-05-147 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005). 

Summary 
Page 2 GAO-05-923T 

• increasing the amount of effort and funds available for addressing firerelated concerns, such as fuel reduction on federal lands; 

• improving data and research on wildland fire, local fire management plans, 

interagency coordination, and collaboration with nonfederal partners; and 

• refining performance measures and results monitoring for wildland fire 

management. 

While this progress has been important, many challenges remain for 

addressing wildland fire problems in a timely and effective manner. Most 

notably, the land management agencies need to complete a cohesive 

strategy that identifies the long-term options and related funding needed 

for reducing fuels and responding to wildland fires when they occur. A 

recent Western Governors’ Association report also called for completing 

such a cohesive federal strategy. The agencies and the Congress need such 

a strategy to make decisions about an effective and affordable long-term 

approach for addressing problems that have been decades in the making 

and will take decades more to resolve. However, completing and 

implementing such a strategy will require that the agencies complete 

several challenging tasks, including 

• developing data systems needed to identify the extent, severity, and 

location of wildland fire threats to the nation’s communities and 

ecosystems; 

• updating local fire management plans to better specify the actions needed 

to effectively address these threats; and 

• assessing the cost-effectiveness and affordability of options for reducing 

fuels. 

In our January 2005 report, we recommended that the Secretaries of 

Agriculture and of the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its 

consideration of the agencies’ fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management 

budgets, with a joint tactical plan outlining the critical steps the agencies 

will take, together with related time frames, to complete a cohesive 

strategy that identifies long-term options and needed funding for reducing 

and maintaining fuels at acceptable levels and responding to the nation’s 

wildland fire problems. The departments of Agriculture and the Interior 

have said that they will produce such a plan by August 2005. In these times 

of limited resources, we believe it is critical that the agencies develop and 

implement this plan in a timely fashion so that they and the Congress, 
Page 3 GAO-05-923T 

especially this Subcommittee, have the best information available to make 

informed decisions in addressing the nation’s wildland fire problems. 

Wildland fire triggered by lightning is a normal, inevitable, and necessary 

ecological process that nature uses to periodically remove excess 

undergrowth, small trees, and vegetation to renew ecosystem productivity. 

However, various human land use and management practices, including 

several decades of fire suppression activities, have reduced the normal 

frequency of wildland fires in many forest and rangeland ecosystems and 

have resulted in abnormally dense and continuous accumulations of 

vegetation that can fuel uncharacteristically large and intense wildland 

fires. Such large intense fires increasingly threaten catastrophic ecosystem 

damage and also increasingly threaten human lives, health, property, and 

infrastructure in the wildland-urban interface. Federal researchers 

estimate that vegetative conditions that can fuel such fires exist on 

approximately 190 million acres––or more than 40 percent––of federal 

lands in the contiguous United States but could vary from 90 million to 200 

million acres, and that these conditions also exist on many nonfederal 

lands. 

Our reviews over the last 5 years identified several weaknesses in the 

federal government’s management response to wildland fire issues. These 

weaknesses included the lack of a national strategy that addressed the 

likely high costs of needed fuel reduction efforts and the need to prioritize 

these efforts. Our reviews also found shortcomings in federal 

implementation at the local level, where over half of all federal land 

management units’ fire management plans did not meet agency 

requirements designed to restore fire’s natural role in ecosystems 

consistent with human health and safety. These plans are intended to 

provide program direction for fuel reduction, preparedness, suppression, 

and rehabilitation actions. The agencies also lacked basic data, such as the 

amount and location of lands needing fuel reduction, and research on the 

effectiveness of different fuel reduction methods on which to base their 

fire management plans and specific project decisions. Furthermore, 

coordination among federal agencies and collaboration between these 

agencies and nonfederal entities were ineffective. This kind of cooperation 

is needed because wildland fire is a shared problem that transcends land 

ownership and administrative boundaries. Finally, we found that better 

accountability for federal expenditures and performance in wildland fire 

management was needed. Agencies were unable to assess the extent to 

which they were reducing wildland fire risks or to establish meaningful 

fuel reduction performance measures, as well as to determine the costBackground 
Page 4 GAO-05-923T 

effectiveness of these efforts, because they lacked both monitoring data 

and sufficient data on the location of lands at high risk of catastrophic 

fires to know the effects of their actions. As a result, their performance 

measures created incentives to reduce fuels on all acres, as opposed to 

focusing on high-risk acres. 

Because of these weaknesses, and because experts said that wildland fire 

problems could take decades to resolve, we said that a cohesive, longterm, federal wildland fire management strategy was needed.3

 We said that 

this cohesive strategy needed to focus on identifying options for reducing 

fuels over the long term in order to decrease future wildland fire risks and 

related costs. We also said that the strategy should identify the costs 

associated with those different fuel reduction options over time, so that 

the Congress could make cost-effective, strategic funding decisions. 

The federal government has made important progress over the last 5 years 

in improving its management of wildland fire. Nationally, it has established 

strategic priorities and increased resources for implementing these 

priorities. Locally, it has enhanced data and research, planning, 

coordination, and collaboration with other parties. With regard to 

accountability, it has improved performance measures and established a 

monitoring framework. 

Over the last 5 years, the federal government has been formulating a 

national strategy known as the National Fire Plan, composed of several 

strategic documents that set forth a priority to reduce wildland fire risks to 

communities. Similarly, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 

directs that at least 50 percent of funding for fuel reduction projects 

authorized under the act be allocated to wildland-urban interface areas. 

While we have raised concerns about the way the agencies have defined 

these areas and the specificity of their prioritization guidance, we believe 

that the act’s clarification of the community protection priority provides a 

good starting point for identifying and prioritizing funding needs. Similarly, 

in contrast to fiscal year 1999, when we reported that the Forest Service 

 3

GAO/RCED-99-65.

Important Progress 

Has Been Made in 

Addressing Federal 

Wildland Fire 

Management 

Problems over the 

Last 5 Years 

Progress in National 

Strategy: Priorities Have 

Been Clarified and 

Funding Has Been 

Increased for Identified 

Needs 
Page 5 GAO-05-923T 

had not requested increased funding to meet the growing fuel reduction 

needs it had identified, fuel reduction funding for both the Forest Service 

and Interior more than quadrupled by fiscal year 2005. The Congress, in 

the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, also authorized $760 million per year 

to be appropriated for hazardous fuels reduction activities, including 

projects for reducing fuels on up to 20 million acres of land. Moreover, 

appropriations for both agencies’ overall wildland fire management 

activities, including preparedness, fuel reduction, and suppression, tripled 

from about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to nearly $3 billion in fiscal year 

2005. 

The agencies have strengthened local wildland fire management 

implementation by making significant improvements in federal data and 

research on wildland fire over the past 5 years, including an initial 

mapping of fuel hazards nationwide. Additionally, in 2003, the agencies 

approved funding for development of a geospatial data and modeling 

system, called LANDFIRE, to map wildland fire hazards with greater 

precision and uniformity. LANDFIRE—estimated to cost $40 million and 

scheduled for nationwide implementation in 2009––will enable 

comparisons of conditions between different field locations nationwide, 

thus permitting better identification of the nature and magnitude of 

wildland fire risks confronting different community and ecosystem 

resources, such as residential and commercial structures, species habitat, 

air and water quality, and soils. 

The agencies also have improved local fire management planning by 

adopting and executing an expedited schedule to complete plans for all 

land units that had not been in compliance with agency requirements. The 

agencies also adopted a common interagency template for preparing plans 

to ensure greater consistency in their contents. 

Coordination among federal agencies and their collaboration with 

nonfederal partners, critical to effective implementation at the local level, 

also has been improved. In 2001, as a result of congressional direction, the 

agencies jointly formulated a 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy with the 

Western Governors’ Association to involve the states as full partners in 

their efforts. An implementation plan adopted by the agencies in 2002 

details goals, time lines, and responsibilities of the different parties for a 

wide range of activities, including collaboration at the local level to 

identify fuel reduction priorities in different areas. Also in 2002, the 

agencies established an interagency body, the Wildland Fire Leadership 

Council, composed of senior Agriculture and Interior officials and 

Progress in Local 

Implementation: Data and 

Research, Fire 

Management Planning, and 

Coordination and 

Collaboration Have Been 

Strengthened 
Page 6 GAO-05-923T 

nonfederal representatives, to improve coordination of their activities with 

each other and nonfederal parties. 

Accountability for the results the federal government achieves from its 

investments in wildland fire management activities also has been 

strengthened. The agencies have adopted a performance measure that 

identifies the amount of acres moved from high-hazard to low-hazard fuel 

conditions, replacing a performance measure for fuel reductions that 

measured only the total acres of fuel reductions and created an incentive 

to treat less costly acres rather than the acres that presented the greatest 

hazards. Additionally, in 2004, to have a better baseline for measuring 

progress, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council approved a nationwide 

framework for monitoring the effects of wildland fire. While an 

implementation plan is still needed for this framework, it nonetheless 

represents a critical step toward enhancing wildland fire management 

accountability. 

While the federal government has made important progress over the past 5 

years in addressing wildland fire, a number of challenges still must be met 

to complete development of a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies 

available long-term options and funding needed to reduce fuels on the 

nation’s forests and rangelands. Without such a strategy, the Congress will 

not have an informed understanding of when, how, and at what cost 

wildland fire problems can be brought under control. None of the strategic 

documents adopted by the agencies to date have identified these options 

and related funding needs, and the agencies have yet to delineate a plan or 

schedule for doing so. To identify these options and funding needs, the 

agencies will have to address several challenging tasks related to their 

data systems, fire management plans, and the assessment of the costeffectiveness and affordability of different options for reducing fuels. 

The agencies face several challenges to completing and implementing 

LANDFIRE, so that they can more precisely identify the extent and 

location of wildland fire threats and better target fuel reduction efforts. 

These challenges include using LANDFIRE to better reconcile the effects 

of fuel reduction activities with the agencies’ other stewardship 

responsibilities for protecting ecosystem resources, such as air, water, 

soils, and species habitat, which fuel reduction efforts can adversely 

affect. The agencies also need LANDFIRE to help them better measure and 

assess their performance. For example, the data produced by LANDFIRE 

Progress in Accountability: 

Better Performance 

Measures and a Results 

Monitoring Framework 

Have Been Developed 

Agencies Face Several 

Challenges to 

Completing a LongNeeded Cohesive 

Strategy for Reducing 

Fuels and Responding 

to Wildland Fire 

Problems 

Completing and 

Implementing the 

LANDFIRE System Is 

Essential to Identifying 

and Addressing Wildland 

Fire Threats 
Page 7 GAO-05-923T 

will help them devise a separate performance measure for maintaining 

conditions on low-hazard lands to ensure that their conditions do not 

deteriorate to more hazardous conditions while funding is being focused 

on lands with high-hazard conditions. 

In implementing LANDFIRE, however, the agencies will have to overcome 

the challenges presented by the current lack of a consistent approach to 

assessing the risks of wildland fires to ecosystem resources as well as the 

lack of an integrated, strategic, and unified approach to managing and 

using information systems and data, including those such as LANDFIRE, in 

wildland fire decision making. Currently, software, data standards, 

equipment, and training vary among the agencies and field units in ways 

that hamper needed sharing and consistent application of the data. Also, 

LANDFIRE data and models may need to be revised to take into account 

recent research findings that suggest part of the increase in wildland fire in 

recent years has been caused by a shift in climate patterns. This research 

also suggests that these new climate patterns may continue for decades, 

resulting in further increases in the amount of wildland fire. Thus, the 

nature, extent, and geographical distribution of hazards initially identified 

in LANDFIRE, as well as the costs for addressing them, may have to be 

reassessed. 

The agencies will need to update their local fire management plans when 

more detailed, nationally consistent LANDFIRE data become available. 

The plans also will have to be updated to incorporate recent agency fire 

research on approaches to more effectively address wildland fire threats. 

For example, a 2002 interagency analysis found that protecting wildlandurban interface communities more effectively—as well as more costeffectively—might require locating a higher proportion of fuel reduction 

projects outside of the wildland-urban interface than currently envisioned, 

so that fires originating in the wildlands do not become too large to 

suppress by the time they arrive at the interface. Moreover, other agency 

research suggests that placing fuel reduction treatments in specific 

geometric patterns may, for the same cost, provide protection for up to 

three times as many community and ecosystem resources as do other 

approaches, such as placing fuel breaks around communities and 

ecosystems resources. Timely updating of fire management plans with the 

latest research findings on optimal design and location of treatments also 

will be critical to the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these plans. 

The Forest Service indicated that this updating could occur during annual 

reviews of fire management plans to determine whether any changes to 

them may be needed. 

Fire Management Plans 

Will Need to Be Updated 

with Latest Data and 

Research on Wildland Fire 
Page 8 GAO-05-923T 

Completing the LANDFIRE data and modeling system and updating fire 

management plans should enable the agencies to formulate a range of 

options for reducing fuels. However, to identify optimal and affordable 

choices among these options, the agencies will have to complete certain 

cost-effectiveness analysis efforts they currently have under way. These 

efforts include an initial 2002 interagency analysis of options and costs for 

reducing fuels, congressionally-directed improvements to their budget 

allocation systems, and a new strategic analysis framework that considers 

affordability. 

The Interagency Analysis of Options and Costs: In 2002, a team of Forest 

Service and Interior experts produced an estimate of the funds needed to 

implement eight different fuel reduction options for protecting 

communities and ecosystems across the nation over the next century. 

Their analysis also considered the impacts of fuels reduction activities on 

future costs for other principal wildland fire management activities, such 

as preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation, if fuels were not 

reduced. The team concluded that the option that would result in reducing 

the risks to communities and ecosystems across the nation could require 

an approximate tripling of current fuel reduction funding to about $1.4 

billion for an initial period of a few years. These initially higher costs 

would decline after fuels had been reduced enough to use less expensive 

controlled burning methods in many areas and more fires could be 

suppressed at lower cost, with total wildland fire management costs, as 

well as risks, being reduced after 15 years. Alternatively, the team said that 

not making a substantial short-term investment using a landscape focus 

could increase both costs and risks to communities and ecosystems in the 

long term. More recently, however, Interior has said that the costs and 

time required to reverse current increasing risks may be less when other 

vegetation management activities—such as timber harvesting and habitat 

improvements—are considered that were not included in the interagency 

team’s original assessment but also can influence wildland fire. 

The cost of the 2002 interagency team’s option that reduced risks to 

communities and ecosystems over the long term is consistent with a June 

2002 National Association of State Foresters’ projection of the funding 

needed to implement the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy developed by 

the agencies and the Western Governors’ Association the previous year. 

The state foresters projected a need for steady increases in fuel reduction 

funding up to a level of about $1.1 billion by fiscal year 2011. This is 

somewhat less than that of the interagency team’s estimate, but still about 

2-1/2 times current levels. 

Ongoing Efforts to Assess 

the Cost-Effectiveness and 

Affordability of Fuel 

Reduction Options Need to 

Be Completed 
Page 9 GAO-05-923T 

The interagency team of experts who prepared the 2002 analysis of 

options and associated costs said their estimates of long-term costs could 

only be considered an approximation because the data used for their 

national-level analysis were not sufficiently detailed. They said a more 

accurate estimate of the long-term federal costs and consequences of 

different options nationwide would require applying this national analysis 

framework in smaller geographic areas using more detailed data, such as 

that produced by LANDFIRE, and then aggregating these smaller-scale 

results. 

The New Budget Allocation System: Agency officials told us that a tool for 

applying this interagency analysis at a smaller geographic scale for 

aggregation nationally may be another management system under 

development—the Fire Program Analysis system. This system, being 

developed in response to congressional committee direction to improve 

budget allocation tools, is designed to identify the most cost-effective 

allocations of annual preparedness funding for implementing agency field 

units’ local fire management plans. Eventually, the Fire Program Analysis 

system, being initially implemented in 2005, will use LANDFIRE data and 

provide a smaller geographical scale for analyses of fuel reduction options 

and thus, like LANDFIRE, will be critical for updating fire management 

plans. Officials said that this preparedness budget allocation 

systemwhen integrated with an additional component now being 

considered for allocating annual fuel reduction funding—could be 

instrumental in identifying the most cost-effective long-term levels, mixes, 

and scheduling of these two wildland fire management activities. 

Completely developing the Fire Program Analysis system, including the 

fuel reduction funding component, is expected to cost about $40 million 

and take until at least 2007 and perhaps until 2009. 

The New Strategic Analysis Effort: In May 2004, Agriculture and Interior 

began the initial phase of a wildland fire strategic planning effort that also 

might contribute to identifying long-term options and needed funding for 

reducing fuels and responding to the nation’s wildland fire problems. This 

effortthe Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Reviewis intended to result in an 

overall federal interagency strategic planning document for wildland fire 

management and risk reduction and to provide a blueprint for developing 

affordable and integrated fire preparedness, fuels reduction, and fire 

suppression programs. Because of this effort’s consideration of 

affordability, it may provide a useful framework for developing a cohesive 

strategy that includes identifying long-term options and related funding 

needs. The preliminary planning, analysis, and internal review phases of 
Page 10 GAO-05-923T 

this effort have been completed and an initial report is expected in July 

2005. 

The improvements in data, modeling, and fire behavior research that the 

agencies have under way, together with the new cost-effectiveness focus 

of the Fire Program Analysis system to support local fire management 

plans, represent important tools that the agencies can begin to use now to 

provide the Congress with initial and successively more accurate 

assessments of long-term fuel reduction options and related funding 

needs. Moreover, a more transparent process of interagency analysis in 

framing these options and their costs will permit better identification and 

resolution of differing assumptions, approaches, and values. This 

transparency provides the best assurance of accuracy and consensus 

among differing estimates, such as those of the interagency team and the 

National Association of State Foresters. 

In November 2004, the Western Governors’ Association issued a report 

prepared by its Forest Health Advisory Committee that assessed 

implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy, which the 

association had jointly devised with the agencies in 2001.4

 Although the 

association’s report had a different scope than our review, its findings and 

recommendations are, nonetheless, generally consistent with ours about 

the progress made by the federal government and the challenges it faces 

over the next 5 years. In particular, it recommends, as we do, completion 

of a long-term, federal, cohesive strategy for reducing fuels. It also cites 

the need for continued efforts to improve, among other things, data on 

hazardous fuels, fire management plans, the Fire Program Analysis system, 

and cost-effectiveness in fuel reductions––all challenges we have 

emphasized today. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the progress made by the federal government 

over the last 5 years has provided a sound foundation for addressing the 

problems that wildland fire will increasingly present to communities, 

ecosystems, and federal budgetary resources over the next few years and 

decades. As yet, however, there is no clear single answer about how best 

 4

Report to the Western Governors on the Implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive 

Strategy, Western Governors’ Association Forest Health Advisory Committee (Denver, 

Colo.: 2004). 

A Recent Western 

Governors’ 

Association Report Is 

Consistent with 

GAO’s Findings and 

Recommendation 

Conclusions 
Page 11 GAO-05-923T 

to address these problems in either the short or long term. Instead, there 

are different options, each needing further development to understand the 

trade-offs among the risks and funding involved. The Congress needs to 

understand these options and trade-offs in order to make informed policy 

and appropriations decisions on this 21st century challenge. 

This is the same message we provided in 1999 when we first called for 

development of a cohesive strategy identifying options and funding needs. 

But it has not been completed. While the agencies are now in a better 

position to do so, they must build on the progress made to date by 

completing data and modeling efforts underway, updating their fire 

management plans with the results of these data efforts and ongoing 

research, and following through on recent cost-effectiveness and 

affordability initiatives. However, time is running out. Further delay in 

completing a strategy that cohesively integrates these activities to identify 

options and related funding needs will only result in increased long-term 

risks to communities, ecosystems, and federal budgetary resources. 

Because there is an increasingly urgent need for a cohesive federal 

strategy that identifies long-term options and related funding needs for 

reducing fuels, we recommended that the Secretaries of Agriculture and of 

the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of the 

agencies’ fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management budgets, with a joint 

tactical plan outlining the critical steps the agencies will take, together 

with related time frames, to complete such a cohesive strategy. 

In an April 2005 letter, Agriculture and Interior said that they will produce 

by August 2005, for the Wildland Fire Leadership Council’s review and 

approval, a joint tactical plan that will identify the steps and time frames 

for completing a cohesive strategy. We look forward to the agencies 

completing this important step. However, as noted at the outset of this 

testimony, the window of opportunity for effectively addressing wildland 

fire is rapidly closing. Thus, developing a cohesive strategy should not wait 

until 2009, when LANDFIRE and the Fire Program Analysis are fully 

developed. As we have noted, the 2002 interagency analysis of long-term 

options and costs is a good starting point that can serve as a basis for 

providing the Congress with interim updates on options and funding needs 

to respond to wildland fires. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased 

to answer any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee 

may have at this time. 
Page 12 GAO-05-923T 

For further information on this testimony, please contact Robert A. 

Robinson at (202) 512-3841 or robinsonr@gao.gov, or Robin M. Nazzaro at 

(202) 512-3841or nazzaror@gao.gov. Individuals making key contributions 

to this testimony included David P. Bixler, Janet Frisch, Richard Johnson, 

and Chester Joy. 

GAO Contacts and 

Staff 

Acknowledgments 

(360613) 
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