United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to the Subcommittee on Forests

and Forest Health, Committee on

Resources, House of Representatives

April 1999 WESTERN NATIONAL

FORESTS

A Cohesive Strategy is

Needed to Address

Catastrophic Wildfire

Threats

GAO/RCED-99-65

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

Resources, Community, and

Economic Development Division

B-281890 

April 2, 1999

The Honorable Helen Chenoweth

Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests

 and Forest Health

Committee on Resources

House of Representative

Dear Madam Chairman:

In response to your request and as agreed with your office, this report describes (1) the extent

and seriousness of problems related to the health of national forests in the interior West, (2) the

status of efforts by the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to address the most serious

of these problems, and (3) barriers to successfully addressing these problems and options for

overcoming them. The report contains a recommendation to the Secretary of Agriculture for

developing a more cohesive strategy to address growing threats to national forest resources and

nearby communities from catastrophic wildfires.

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees; the

Honorable Dan Glickman, the Secretary of Agriculture; and the Honorable Michael Dombeck,

the Chief of the Forest Service. We will also make copies available to others upon request.

Please call me at (202) 512-9775 if you or your staff have any questions about this report. Major

contributors to this report are listed in appendix II.

Sincerely yours,

Barry T. Hill,

Associate Director, Energy Resources,

 and Science Issues
Executive Summary

Purpose National forests of the dry, interior portion of the western United States

that are managed by the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service have

undergone significant changes over the last century and a half, becoming

much denser, with fewer large trees and many more small, tightly spaced

trees and underbrush. These changes have raised concerns about the

current health of these forests and their continued ability to provide for

sustained levels of uses, including timber and wildlife habitat, by future

generations of Americans, as required by law. In response to a request

from the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, House Committee

on Resources, GAO examined issues related to the health of these forests.

In this report, GAO discusses (1) the extent and seriousness of

forest-health-related problems on national forests of the interior West,

(2) the status of efforts by the Forest Service to address the most serious

of these problems, and (3) barriers to successfully addressing these

problems and options for overcoming them.

Background The Forest Service manages about 155 national forests covering

192 million acres of land—nearly 9 percent of the nation’s total surface

area. About 70 percent of these lands are located in the dry, interior

portions of the western United States. Laws guiding the management of

the national forests require them to be managed under the principles of

multiple use and sustained yield to meet the diverse needs of the American

people. Under the multiple-use principle, the Forest Service is required to

plan for six renewable surface uses—outdoor recreation, rangeland,

timber, watersheds and water flows, wilderness, and wildlife and fish.

Under the sustained-yield principle, the agency is required to manage its

lands to provide high levels of these uses to current users while sustaining

undiminished the lands’ ability to produce these uses for future

generations.

To carry out this mission, the Forest Service has adopted a management

approach that recognizes that ensuring the long-term productivity of the

land for these uses requires sustaining forest health. Although definitions

of forest health vary, scientists believe a useful method for assessing it is

to compare the current ecological conditions of a forest—especially the

conditions of its tree stands—with the range of past ecological conditions

it has exhibited. This historical range indicates the variation over time in

conditions that normally occur in response to common local, natural

disturbances, such as fires, floods, windstorms, or droughts, and provides

a basis for identifying the forest’s capacity to provide for different uses

over time.

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Executive Summary

Historically, tree stands on the forests of the interior West have differed in

composition and structure from those found elsewhere. These differences

were largely attributable to the region’s dry climate and varied elevations.

In this setting, frequent low-intensity wildfires periodically removed

undergrowth and smaller trees from many of the region’s lower-elevation

forests. In recent years, changes in the condition of these

forests—including changes in tree stand density, species composition, and

insect and disease infestation levels—have led some to call these forests

unhealthy. The condition of these forests is of great public interest

because their recreational and aesthetic values have led to population

increases along their boundaries in recent years.

Results in Brief The most extensive and serious problem related to the health of national

forests in the interior West is the overaccumulation of vegetation, which

has caused an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable, and

catastrophically destructive wildfires. According to the Forest Service,

39 million acres on national forests in the interior West are at high risk of

catastrophic wildfire. Past management practices, especially the Forest

Service’s decades-old policy of putting out wildfires on the national

forests, disrupted the historical occurrence of frequent low-intensity fires,

which had periodically removed flammable undergrowth without

significantly damaging larger trees. Because this normal cycle of fire was

disrupted, vegetation has accumulated, creating high levels of fuels for

catastrophic wildfires and transforming much of the region into a

tinderbox. The number of large wildfires, and of acres burned by them, has

increased over the last decade, as have the costs of attempting to put them

out. These fires not only compromise the forests’ ability to provide timber,

outdoor recreation, clean water, and other resources but they also pose

increasingly grave risks to human health, safety, property, and

infrastructure, especially along the boundaries of forests where population

has grown significantly in recent years.

During the 1990s, the Forest Service began to address the unintended

consequences of its policy of putting out wildfires. In 1997, it announced

its goal to improve forest health by resolving the problems of

uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires on national forests by the end of

fiscal year 2015. To accomplish this goal, it has (1) initiated a program to

monitor forest health, (2) refocused its wildland fire management program

to increase the number of acres on which it reduces the accumulated

vegetation that forms excessive fuels; and (3) restructured its budget to

better ensure that funds are available for reducing these fuels. The

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Executive Summary

Congress has supported the agency’s efforts by increasing the funds for

reducing fuels and authorizing a multiyear program to better assess

problems and solutions.

However, because it lacks adequate data, the Forest Service has not yet

developed a cohesive strategy for addressing several factors that present

significant barriers to improving the health of the national forests by

reducing fuels. As a result, many acres of national forests in the interior

West may remain at high risk of uncontrollable wildfire at the end of fiscal

year 2015. Efforts to reduce accumulated fuels can adversely affect the

Forest Service’s achievement of other stewardship objectives. For

example, controlled fires can be used to reduce fuels, but (1) such fires

may get out of control, and (2) the smoke they produce can cause

significant air pollution. As a result, mechanical methods, including

commercial timber harvesting, will often be necessary to remove

accumulated fuels. However, mechanical removals are problematic

because the Forest Service’s (1) incentives tend to focus efforts on areas

that may not present the highest fire hazards and (2) timber sales and

other contracting procedures are not designed for removing vast amounts

of materials with little or no commercial value. As a result, removing

accumulated fuels may cost the Forest Service hundreds of millions of

dollars annually. But the problem is so extensive that even this level of

effort may not be adequate to prevent many catastrophic fires over the

next few decades. This report recommends the development of a cohesive

strategy to reduce accumulated fuels on national forests of the interior

West in an effort to limit the threat of catastrophic wildfire.

Principal Findings

Catastrophic Wildfires

Threaten Forest Resources

and Communities

Tree stands on national forests of the interior West have grown much

denser in recent decades, have undergone shifts in species composition,

and have experienced increases in some insect and disease infestations.

These conditions, often considered indicators of poor forest health,

jeopardize the ability of these forests to sustain wildlife habitat as well as

timber production. In addition, they pose a more immediate problem–the

threat of catastrophic wildfires. After declining fairly steadily for 75 years,

the average number of acres burned by wildfires annually on national

forests began to rise over the last decade, nearly quadrupling to about

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Executive Summary

three-quarters of a million acres per year. Virtually all of this rise is

attributable to the increasing number of very large fires.

Scientists and agency officials believe that this increase in large, intense,

uncontrollable, and catastrophically destructive wildfires is in large part

the result of the Forest Service’s decades-old policy of putting out

wildfires on national forests. This policy disrupted the historical

occurrence of frequent, low-intensity fires in many areas of the interior

West. Such fires periodically removed smaller live and downed vegetation,

preventing accumulations that could result in larger fires. But as

vegetation has accumulated, fires have become larger and more difficult

and expensive to put out. The average annual costs of attempting to put

out these fires grew by 150 percent, from $134 million in fiscal year 1986 to

$335 million in fiscal year 1994 (in constant 1994 dollars). The costs of

preparedness, including the costs of maintaining a readiness force to fight

the fires, also rose, from $189 million in fiscal year 1992 to $326 million in

fiscal year 1997—an increase of about 70 percent.

Outside experts and Forest Service officials generally agree that increased

fire suppression efforts will not be successful because such inevitable,

large, intense wildfires are generally impossible for firefighters to stop and

are only extinguished by rainfall or when there is no more material to

burn. They are concerned that, in the future, such fires will prevent the

Forest Service from meeting its mission requirement to sustain the

national forests’ multiple uses because the fires will likely damage soils,

habitat, and watershed functioning for many generations or even

permanently.

In recent years, the number of people living along the boundaries of the

national forests has grown significantly. As a result, the increasing

numbers of larger, more intense fires pose grave hazards to human health,

safety, property, and infrastructure in these areas, which are referred to as

“wildland/urban interface” areas. Not only do the fires take lives, but

also, because the smoke from them contains substantial amounts of fine

particulate matter and other hazardous pollutants, they can pose

substantial health risks to people living in the wildland/urban interface. In

addition, the fires threaten to damage infrastructure, such as the reservoirs

that provide water to these nearby populations. According to the Forest

Service, maintaining current funding levels for preparedness, as is now

planned, will result in increased risks of injuries and loss of life to

firefighters and the public. Experts believe that the “window of

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Executive Summary

opportunity” for taking management action is only about 10 to 25 years

before catastrophic wildfires become widespread.

Recent Actions to Address

Catastrophic Wildfires Are

Important but May Be Too

Little, Too Late

Besides increasing preparedness and suppression efforts over the last few

years, the Forest Service has taken a number of important steps to address

the growing threat of wildfires. In particular, in 1995, it refocused its fire

management program to reduce accumulated fuels. In 1997, the Chief of

the Forest Service adopted an internal agency recommendation to

increase the number of acres on which fuels are reduced from about

570,000 acres to 3 million acres annually by fiscal year 2005 and to

continue this level until the year 2015. However, GAO’s analysis of the

agency’s initial plans and data indicate that even this level of effort may

leave about 10 million acres of the current 39 million acres at high risk of

catastrophic wildfire.

The Forest Service may not be able to address all of the acres needing

attention for several reasons. First, although the agency has announced its

intent to give priority to threats in the wildland/urban interface, its funds

for reducing fuels are currently allocated substantially to maintaining low

fuel levels on forests in other regions with less serious conditions so that

conditions there do not become as hazardous as in the interior West. For

this same reason, a significant portion of the future funds for reducing

fuels will have to be allocated to those other regions. In addition, the

agency is hampered in systematically implementing its priority for

reducing fuels in the wildland/urban interface because it has only recently

begun to define and map these areas. Finally, the agency’s fiscal year 2000

budget proposal provides the same level of funding for reducing fuels as

the previous fiscal year’s budget, meaning that, with rising costs, the

agency will reduce fuels on fewer, rather than more, acres as initially

planned.

In 1998 and 1999, the Congress authorized two efforts supporting the

Forest Service’s efforts—the Joint Fire Science Program and a set of

“stewardship contracting demonstration projects.” The Joint Fire Science

Program is responsible for developing consistent information on

accumulated fuels and ways to reduce them. The data being developed

under the program are being used initially to map the locations of existing

risks from accumulated fuels. This and other research activities of the

Joint Fire Science Program may take 10 years to complete. Several more

years may be required to incorporate all the lessons learned into revised

forest plans. The stewardship contracting demonstration projects are

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Executive Summary

using alternative contracting procedures for working with nonfederal

partners to demonstrate mechanical methods of removing materials

(including timber harvesting) to reduce accumulated fuels. However, this

program has also just begun. Lessons learned from the program can be

incorporated into an agencywide strategic approach if a consistent method

for evaluating the results of the demonstration projects is devised, but

such an evaluation methodology has not yet been developed.

A Cohesive Strategy Is

Needed for Addressing

Numerous Barriers to

Effective Action

Efforts to address catastrophic wildfires face several barriers, including

the fact that most methods of reducing fuels can be difficult to reconcile

with agencies’ other responsibilities. For instance, many agency officials

told GAO they do not believe it is possible to set controlled fires to reduce

fuels on a scale replicating that of natural fires and still meet air quality

standards under the Clean Air Act. The Forest Service and the

Environmental Protection Agency are involved in a 3-year experiment to

better determine whether and how it will be possible to reconcile

controlled burning and these air quality standards. Moreover, because of

climatic conditions and the density of tree stands, the danger of fire’s

escaping from such controlled burning is often too high in many areas for

this method to be used. Mechanically removing fuels (through commercial

timber harvesting and other means) can also have adverse effects on

wildlife habitat and water quality in many areas. Officials told GAO that,

because of these effects, a large-scale expansion of commercial timber

harvesting alone for removing materials would not be feasible.

However, because the Forest Service relies on the timber program for

funding many of its other activities, including reducing fuels, it has often

used this program to address the wildfire problem. The difficulty with

such an approach, however, is that the lands with commercially valuable

timber are often not those with the greatest wildfire hazards. Additionally,

there are problems with the incentives in the fuel reduction program.

Currently, managers are rewarded for the number of acres on which they

reduce fuels, not for reducing fuels on the lands with the highest fire

hazards. Because reducing fuels in areas with greater hazards is often

more expensive—meaning that fewer acres can be completed with the

same funding level—managers have an incentive not to undertake efforts

on such lands.

Moreover, the agency’s current statutorily defined contracting procedures

for commercial timber sales—as well as for service contracts that do not

involve selling timber but are let simply for the service of removing excess

Page 7 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Executive Summary

fuels—were not designed to (1) facilitate the systematic removal of large

volumes of low-value material over a number of years, (2) readily combine

funds for conducting timber sales with funds for reducing accumulated

fuels, or (3) allow contractors to retain this low-value material to partially

offset the costs of its removal. Because of the combined (1) need to

perform costly mechanical removals, (2) lack of value for the materials,

and (3) lack of contracting procedures designed to facilitate their removal,

GAO estimates that the cost to the Forest Service to reduce fuels on the

39 million acres at high risk could be as much as $12 billion between now

and the end of fiscal year 2015, or an average of about $725 million

annually. This is more than 10 times the current level of funding for

reducing fuels, and the agency, contrary to its earlier plans, has requested

no increase in this funding for fiscal year 2000.

The Forest Service has not yet devised a cohesive strategy to address

these barriers to reducing excessive national forest fuel levels and

associated catastrophic wildfires. It has not done so, in large part, because

it lacks basic data on, for example, the (1) locations and levels of existing

excessive fuel accumulations, (2) effects on other resources of different

methods of reducing fuels, and (3) relative cost-effectiveness of these

different methods, all of which are needed to identify quantitative

measures and goals for fuels reducing fuels. Nor has the Forest Service

identified a firm schedule for completing activities that will provide it with

such data. The lack of such performance measures and goals, and of a

cohesive strategy and schedule for developing and accomplishing them,

makes it difficult for the agency to be held accountable for achieving its

statutorily mandated mission of sustaining multiple uses.

Recommendation to

the Secretary of

Agriculture

We recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the Chief of the

Forest Service to develop, and formally communicate to the Congress, a

cohesive strategy for reducing and maintaining accumulated fuels on

national forests of the interior West at acceptable levels. We further

recommend that this strategy include (1) specific steps for acquiring the

data needed to establish meaningful performance measures and goals for

fuel reduction, (b) identifying ways of better reconciling different fuel

reduction approaches with other stewardship objectives, and (c)

identifying changes in incentives and statutorily defined contracting

procedures that would better facilitate the accomplishment of fuel

reduction goals; (2) a schedule indicating dates for completing each of

these steps; and (3) estimates of the potential and likely overall and annual

Page 8 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Executive Summary

costs of accomplishing this strategy based on different options identified

in the strategy as being available for doing so.

Agency Comments The Forest Service reviewed a draft of this report and generally agreed

with GAO’s findings, conclusions, and recommendation. In its comments,

the agency stated that the report is very comprehensive, does a good job of

covering the problem, and effectively portrays the conditions found on

many national forest throughout the interior West. The agency agrees that

it has not advanced a cohesive strategy to treat all 39 million acres of

national forestlands at risk of catastrophic fire but says that it is

committed to developing one in a timely manner and (1) has a general

strategy for reducing wildfire threats, (2) is currently developing a more

specific planning process and tools for completing this strategy, (3) will

make significant progress in eliminating these threats, and (4) has realistic

time frames for accomplishing these tasks. The agency also listed in its

comments several initiatives that it has under way or planned to complete

its more cohesive strategy. According to the agency, these initiatives will

be important in reducing threats from catastrophic wildfires.

This report recognizes that the Forest Service has a general strategy and

has undertaken and is planning several initiatives to develop a more

cohesive strategy. However, GAO believes that the general strategy lacks

cohesiveness because it does not address several barriers that the Forest

Service faces in undertaking its planned fuel reduction activities. Nor is it

clear from the Forest Service’s comments how its current and planned

initiatives, individually and collectively, will provide this cohesiveness. GAO

also believes that the agency needs to be accountable for accomplishing

the strategy. For these reasons, GAO believes that the agency’s more

cohesive strategy should include, as specific steps, those actions in its

current and planned initiatives that it believes will enable it to address

these barriers, as well as a schedule for completing them. GAO believes that

this delineation of specific actions and a schedule will provide a practical

framework and process for accomplishing the agency’s intentions. The

agency also provided a number of technical and clarifying comments. GAO

revised the draft report where appropriate in response to the agency’s

comments. The agency’s comments and GAO’s responses to them are found

in appendix I of this report.

Page 9 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Contents

Executive Summary 2

Chapter 1 

Introduction

12

The Forest Service’s Mission Is Multiple Use and Sustained Yield 12

Sustaining Ecosystems Is the Agency’s Management Approach

for Sustaining Multiple Uses

12

Controversies Exist Over the Health of Western National Forests 13

Forest Health Can Be Assessed by Comparing Present to Past

Forest Conditions

14

Forests of the Interior West Have Distinctive Ecological

Characteristics

14

Recent Population Growth Near Interior Western National

Forests Has Created a “Wildland/Urban Interface”

18

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 19

Chapter 2 

Catastrophic Wildfires

Threaten Resources

and Communities

22

National Forests in the Interior West Have Several Health

Problems

22

Catastrophic Wildfires Are a Serious Consequence of Current

Tree Stand Conditions in the Interior Western National Forests

27

Chapter 3 

Recent Agency

Actions to Address

Catastrophic Wildfires

Are Important but

May Be Too Little, Too

Late

36

The Agency Has Recently Taken Important Steps to Address

Catastrophic Wildfires

36

The Congress Has Increasingly Supported the Agency’s Efforts 37

Actions Planned to Date May Not Be Sufficient or Timely Enough

to Achieve Agency Goals

38

Chapter 4 

The Agency Lacks a

Cohesive Strategy for

Addressing Several

Barriers to Effective

Action

41

Several Barriers Exist to Effective Agency Action 41

The Agency Lacks a Cohesive Strategy for Addressing Barriers 46

Page 10 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Contents

Chapter 5 

Conclusions and

Recommendation

48

Conclusions 48

Recommendation to the Secretary of Agriculture 49

Appendixes Appendix I: Comments From the Forest Service 50

Appendix II: Major Contributors to This Report 60

Figures Figure 1.1: The Interior West 15

Figure 1.2: Location of Frequent Fire Forests in the Interior West 17

Figure 1.3: Population Growth in Relation to National Forests,

1980-96

19

Figure 2.1: 1909 Photograph of Typical Open Ponderosa Pine

Stand in the Bitterroot National Forest In Idaho

23

Figure 2.2: 1989 Photograph Taken From the Same Spot in the

Bitterroot National Forest in the Same Direction

24

Figure 2.3: Number of National Forest Acres Burned by Fire,

1910-97

28

Figure 2.4: Number and Total Acres Burned by Large Wildfires on

All National Forests, 1984-95

29

Figure 2.5: Western Forestlands at Medium and High Risk of

Catastrophic Fire

31

Figure 2.6: Forest Service’s Expenditures for Wildfire

Suppression, Fiscal Years 1986-94

33

Figure 2.7: Forest Service’s Expenditures for Wildfire

Preparedness, Fiscal Years 1992-97

34

Abbreviations

USDA U.S.Department of Agriculture

Page 11 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Chapter 1 

Introduction

The Forest Service’s

Mission Is Multiple

Use and Sustained

Yield

The Forest Service, an agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture

(USDA), manages 155 national forests covering about 192 million acres of

land, or about 9 percent of the nation’s land surface, under the leadership

of the Chief of the Forest Service, who reports to the Under Secretary of

Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment. National forests are

managed under the principles of multiple use and sustained yield to meet

the diverse needs of the American people. Under the multiple-use

principle, the Forest Service is required to plan for six renewable surface

uses—outdoor recreation, rangeland, timber, watersheds and water flows,

wilderness, and wildlife and fish. Under the sustained-yield principle, the

agency is required to manage its lands to provide high levels of these uses

to current users while sustaining undiminished the lands’ ability to

produce these uses for future generations. It implements these principles

using a planning mechanism mandated by the National Forest

Management Act, which requires each forest or group of small forests to

develop a plan for all uses. This plan must be revised at least every 15

years. This plan, together with the individual projects undertaken to

implement it, must comply with various environmental laws establishing

standards or procedures designed to protect individual resources, such as

threatened and endangered species and water and air quality.1

Sustaining

Ecosystems Is the

Agency’s Management

Approach for

Sustaining Multiple

Uses

In 1992, the Forest Service adopted a management approach for sustaining

multiple forest uses called ecosystem management. This management

approach recognizes that protecting individual resources under the

various environmental laws, as well as ensuring the long-term ability of the

land to produce goods and services, requires sustaining the functioning of

ecosystems.2

 Ecosystems comprise interdependent biological components

(plants and animals, including humans), that interact with their physical

environment (soil, water, and air) to form distinct ecological units that

span both federal and nonfederal lands. Through these interactions, the

components of ecosystems tend to become arranged in distinctive kinds of

biological structures, such as different types of forest tree stands. These

different ecosystem structures, in turn, are capable of providing different

kinds and levels of resources for human use, including timber or water.

Natural disturbances, such as fires, floods, windstorms, or droughts, can

temporarily affect ecosystem structures. However, these structures are

1

For a fuller description of the agency’s decision-making process, see Forest Service Decision-Making:

A Framework for Improving Performance (GAO/RCED-97-71, Apr. 29, 1997).

2

For a fuller description of ecosystem management, see Ecosystem Management: Additional Actions

Needed to Adequately Test a Promising Approach (GAO/RCED-94-111, Aug. 16, 1994).

Page 12 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Chapter 1 

Introduction

generally resilient over time, recovering and persisting because they have

evolved to survive the particular patterns of disturbance common to a

given geographical area. Human technology, however, can create rapid,

intense, or large-scale disruptions in ecosystem structures. A disruption,

such as the elimination of an important biological component, can

sometimes alter an ecosystem structure beyond its ability to recover

quickly or at all, making the ecosystem unstable or unsustainable and

ultimately transforming it into a different kind of ecosystem with different

kinds of biological structures. Such a changed ecosystem will provide

different kinds or levels of uses from those that humans previously

enjoyed and expected. In 1997, the Forest Service identified, as a

mission-related, strategic goal, achieving healthy and sustainable

ecosystems through conserving and restoring ecosystem structures. A

specific objective under this broad goal was restoring or protecting the

ecological conditions of forested ecosystems to maintain their

components and their capacity for self-renewal.

Controversies Exist

Over the Health of

Western National

Forests

In recent years, several analyses of conditions on national forests of the

interior West by agency and outside experts have cited evidence of

increased levels of insect and disease infestations; changes in the

composition of tree and other forest plant species, including invasion by

nonnative plants; increases in the density of tree stands and undergrowth;

and increases in the number of small trees.3

 These tree stand conditions

have sometimes been referred to collectively as “forest health” problems.

At the same time, the term “forest health” has been applied to concerns

over declining species, habitat, and watershed conditions on national

forests, and some environmental groups have argued that forest health

should incorporate these concerns. Numerous administrative appeals and

judicial actions have been filed by these groups out of concern that efforts

to improve the health of tree stands—which would be implemented, in

part, through timber harvesting—may exacerbate problems affecting

species, habitat, or watersheds. The Forest Service has also noted a lack of

scientific consensus on, or community awareness and acceptance of, the

actions needed to address forest health problems, the size of the areas

needing to be addressed, and the time frames for taking action. Thus,

despite the widespread use of the term in recent years, there is little

agreement on a definition of forest health, a standard for measuring it, the

appropriate areas and time frames for addressing it, and the actions

needed to achieve it. Many Forest Service staff and others feel that,

3

e.g., Task Force Report on Sustaining Long-Term Forest Health and Productivity, Society of American

Foresters (Bethesda, Md.: 1993); and Forest Health and Fire Danger in Inland Western Forests:

Proceedings of the Conference, Spokane, WA, September 8-9, 1994 (Spokane: Harman Press, 1995).

Page 13 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Chapter 1 

Introduction

because of its vagueness and subjectivity, the concept is often difficult to

use effectively.

Forest Health Can Be

Assessed by

Comparing Present to

Past Forest

Conditions

Forest Service and outside scientists believe that a useful method of

assessing a forest’s health and functioning is to compare the current

conditions of its components and structures to the range of conditions

they have exhibited in the past. This range–within which conditions have

varied over time in response to disturbance patterns common to a given

area—is referred to by scientists as their historical range of variability.

Examining the historical range of variability of a forest’s tree stands is

believed to be an especially useful starting point for analyzing the forest’s

overall health and functioning because (1) tree stands are the defining

biological structures of forested versus other kinds of ecosystems and

(2) the conditions of these structures greatly determine the capacity of a

forest not only to produce timber, but also to maintain soils, watershed

conditions, and wildlife and fish habitats. The historical range of

variability of a forest’s tree stands is identified by examining historical and

biological evidence—such as early pioneers’ reports, old photographs, tree

rings, and soil layers—to discover what biological components and

structures have characterized the forested ecosystem at different times in

its natural history.

Forests of the Interior

West Have Distinctive

Ecological

Characteristics

About 60 percent of all national forests and about 70 percent of their total

acreage are located in the dry, inland portion of the western United States

(hereafter referred to as the “interior West”). This region of the country,

depicted in figure 1.1, generally extends north and south from the

Canadian to the Mexican border and east and west from the Black Hills in

South Dakota to the Cascade mountain range in Washington and Oregon

and to the southwestern deserts and the Coastal range in California.

Page 14 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Chapter 1 

Introduction

Figure 1.1: The Interior West

1

Source: Forest Service.

Distinct ecological processes—driven largely by climate and

topography—shaped the forests of the interior West, producing tree stands

that differed in composition and structure from those in other regions of

the country. Historically, frequent, low-intensity wildfires played a major

role in determining the dispersion and succession of tree stands in the

interior West. A lack of rainfall across the interior West generally also

Page 15 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Chapter 1 

Introduction

slows the decomposition of dead and downed trees and woody material

there.

The most common type of forested lands on national forests of the interior

West are at warm, dry, lower elevations and are generally dominated by

ponderosa pine. These are known as “frequent fire interval” forests

because, before pioneers settled in these areas, fire historically occurred

in them about every 5 to 30 years. Because frequent fires kept these forests

clear of undergrowth, fuels seldom accumulated, and the fires were

generally of low intensity, largely consuming grasses and undergrowth and

not igniting the highly combustible crowns, or tops, of large trees. Figure

1.2 shows the widespread distribution of these “frequent fire interval”

forests.

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Figure 1.2: Location of Frequent Fire Forests in the Interior West

(Figure notes on next page)

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Source: Forest Service.

In contrast, fire historically occurred only about every 40 to 200 years in

the cooler, moister, forests at higher elevations, such as those around

Yellowstone National Park, which are generally dominated by lodgepole

pine. These forests historically developed more dense stands, and fires

there generally killed nearly all of the trees.

Recent Population

Growth Near Interior

Western National

Forests Has Created a

“Wildland/Urban

Interface”

Finally, because the national forests of the interior West are attractive for

recreation and aesthetic enjoyment, population has grown rapidly along

their boundaries in recent years, creating an area termed the

“wildland/urban interface.” Figure 1.3 shows the location of areas in the

interior West with recent high population growth in relation to the region’s

national forests.

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Figure 1.3: Population Growth in

Relation to National Forests, 1980-96

National forests

Counties in interior west with above average population growth (>25%)

Source: Forest Service and U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

As figure 1.3 shows, areas with higher population growth rates in the

interior West over the period are generally concentrated close to national

forests.

Objectives, Scope,

and Methodology

In response to a request from the Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests and

Forest Health, we examined (1) the extent and seriousness of problems

related to the health of national forests in the interior West, (2) the status

of efforts by the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to address the

most serious of these problems, and (3) barriers to successfully addressing

these problems and options for overcoming them.

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As agreed with the requester, to examine the extent and seriousness of

problems related to the health of national forests in the interior West, we

interviewed and obtained documents from agency officials at Forest

Service headquarters, six regional offices with administrative

responsibility for national forests located in the interior West, nine

selected forests within these regions, and selected agency field research

and analysis units. Our selection of agency field units was based on a

judgmental sample, and the results may not always be representative of

other agency units. The forests we visited included the Idaho Panhandle

National Forest in Idaho, the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in

Colorado, the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, the Boise National

Forest in Idaho, the Plumas National Forest in California, the

Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California, the Tahoe National Forest in

California, the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon, and the Umatilla

National Forest in Oregon and Washington. At these forests, we visited

numerous field locations in several ranger districts. We also visited the

Tahoe Basin Management Unit, a unit that surrounds Lake Tahoe,

straddling the California/Nevada border, and is managed separately.

At many locations, we also interviewed and obtained documents from

representatives of national and local industry and environmental

organizations; other federal agencies; state, local and tribal governments;

and academic and professional forestry policy analysis and technical

experts. We also interviewed and obtained documents from

representatives of American Forests; the Pinchot Institute for

Conservation; the Society of American Foresters; the American Forest and

Paper Association; the Western Governor’s Association; the Wilderness

Society; the Sierra Club; Oregon State University; Colorado State

University; the Universities of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and

Northern Arizona; and the Ecological Society of America. We also

examined numerous statutes, hearing records, regulations, and agency

directives related to forest health issues, as well as legislative proposals,

prior GAO reports, and studies by the Congressional Research Service. In

our field visits, we sometimes also made visual inspections of, and queried

agency officials about, forest conditions, their causes, and their

significance, as well as obtained views on these issues from local outside

parties active in forest issues.

To examine the status of the Forest Service’s efforts to address the most

serious problems related to forest health, we interviewed agency officials

and outside parties, reviewed related agency program and budget data,

and consulted numerous agency and outside studies of agency activities.

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To obtain a better understanding of what was involved in some of these

activities, we also visited several field sites where such activities were

either under way or had recently been completed. We also reviewed

agency technical models and planning documents to assess the adequacy

of prospective agency efforts and strategies and consulted with other

parties to obtain their views on these subjects. As also agreed with the

requester’s office, our review generally covered agency activities since

1993 and was focused on the role of tree stand conditions in forest health.

To examine barriers to successfully addressing problems related to forest

health and options for overcoming them, we reviewed numerous recent

and ongoing draft studies by executive branch, agency headquarters and

field unit, legislative, and outside task forces and commissions, as well as

academic and professional journals, and we interviewed and obtained

documents from agency officials and outside parties. With respect to

estimates of costs for addressing these conditions, we reviewed agency

data, estimates from the Congressional Research Service, and documents

related to the agency’s fiscal year 1998, 1999, and 2000 budgets, as well as

annual performance plan data prepared by the agency in conformance

with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. During the

course of our review, we periodically met with agency headquarters staff

and discussed information we had obtained through our work.

Although we did not independently verify the accuracy of the data the

agency provided to us on acreage, conditions, activities, and costs, we did

compare these data with numerous outside analyses and estimates, as well

as discussed factors affecting the data’s accuracy with agency field and

headquarters personnel. We found that those other sources generally

corroborated the data the agency provided to us, and in no instances did

any inconsistencies significantly affect or materially qualify any findings or

conclusions that were based on the agency’s data. Our review was

conducted from October 1997 through March 1999 in accordance with

generally accepted government accounting standards.

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According to the Forest Service, about 39 million acres of tree stands on

national forests of the interior West are at high risk of catastrophic fire,

largely because the agency’s decades-old policy of suppressing historically

occurring, periodic, small wildfires has led to unprecedented

accumulations of flammable materials. As a result, wildfires have

increased in number and size over the last decade and are increasingly

difficult and costly to fight. While these conditions threaten the

sustainability of forest resources, they also increasingly threaten human

health, lives, property, and infrastructure in nearby communities. The

window of opportunity for taking corrective action is estimated to be only

about 10 to 25 years before widespread, unstoppable wildfires with severe

immediate and long-term consequences occur on an unprecedented scale.

National Forests in

the Interior West Have

Several Health

Problems

According to the Forest Service, large areas of national forests in the

interior West are not healthy. A key symptom of their poor health is denser

tree stands—i.e., stands with many more small trees, undergrowth, and

accumulated dead materials on the ground than were found in the past.

Additionally, the proportion of less fire-tolerant species in these tree

stands has increased, as has the incidence of some disease and insect

infestations. Increased stand densities are often related to these changes

in tree species, as is the increased incidence of insects and diseases.

Increased Tree Stand

Density, Changing Species

Composition, and Insect

and Disease Infestations

Indicate Poor Forest

Health

According to the Forest Service, a significant symptom of poor health on

national forests in the interior West is the much greater density of stands

now than in the past. For example, officials in the Lincoln National Forest

told us that high stand density conditions exist on an estimated 79,712

acres—or 35 percent—of its mixed conifer forest; 19,099 acres—or

22 percent—of its ponderosa pine forest; and 576,622 acres—or

55 percent—of its pinyon-juniper forest. The proportion of stands with

densely growing, small and medium-sized trees on the Idaho Panhandle

National Forest is reported by the agency to be about 50 percent above

average historical levels. An estimated 35 to 50 percent of the 700,000

acres of mixed conifer and ponderosa pine on the Deschutes National

Forest have more trees per acre than normal and are at risk according to

agency officials.

A 1994 study of scientifically selected sites in Arizona indicated that the

estimated density of trees on 70 sites in the Coconino National Forest had

greatly increased (from 23 per acre in 1867 to 276 in 1990), as it had on 46

sites in the Kaibab National Forest (from 56 trees per acre in 1881 to 851 in

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1990).4 By another measure, the estimated total cross-sectional area of

trees, measured at 4.5 feet above the ground surface, had grown from

about 25 square feet per acre to about 150 square feet on the first forest

and from about 50 square feet per acre to over 150 square feet on the other

forest over the same time periods.

Figures 2.1 and 2.2, are photographs taken from the same spot on the

Bitterroot National Forest in 1909 and 1989. They illustrate the dramatic

change over the intervening 80 years from the historically more common,

open, large tree structure of such forest stands to the more recent,

typically denser structural conditions dominated by smaller trees.

Figure 2.1: 1909 Photograph of Typical

Open Ponderosa Pine Stand in the

Bitterroot National Forest in Idaho

Source: Forest Service.

4

W.W. Covington and M.M. Moore, “Postsettlement Changes in Natural Fire Regimes” and “Forest

Structure: Ecological Restoration of Old-Growth Ponderosa Pine Forests,” copublished simultaneously

in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry , Vol. 2, No. 1/2 (1994); and Assessing Forest Ecosystem Health

in the Inland West, R. Neil Sampson and David L. Adams, eds. (Binghamton, N.Y.: The Haworth Press,

1994).

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Figure 2.2: 1989 Photograph Taken

From the Same Spot in the Bitterroot

National Forest in the Same Direction

Source: Forest Service.

A second major symptom of health problems on national forests in the

interior West that we visited was a change in the historical composition of

tree species, often to a greater proportion of trees of less fire-tolerant

species. For example, the historically prominent western larch species has

been lost and replaced by other species of trees on 211,000 acres—or

69 percent of its historical acreage—on the Idaho Panhandle National

Forest. Likewise, the ponderosa pine has been replaced by other species

on 76,000 acres—or 67 percent of its historical acreage—on this forest. In

many parts of Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest, ponderosa pine has

also been replaced by Douglas fir and mixed conifers over the last few

decades.

A third major symptom of health problems on national forests in the

interior West is the increase in some insect and disease infestations. For

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example, on the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, round-headed

pine beetles have infested 49,495 acres—or 57 percent—of the forest’s

ponderosa pine, while the western spruce budworm has infested 120,000

acres of its Englemann and blue spruce and Douglas and white fir. In

addition, dwarf mistletoe disease has infested 55,563 acres—or 64

percent—of its ponderosa pine, and 113,875 acres—or about 50

percent—of its Douglas fir. The Douglas fir tussock moth damaged 250,000

acres on the Boise National Forest in Idaho, killing millions of trees. The

Douglas-fir beetle and the fir engraver beetle killed many more trees in this

same forest, and dwarf mistletoe is estimated to infest 119,012 acres—or

33 percent—of the Douglas fir; 78,636 acres—or 10 percent—of the

ponderosa pine; and 43,376 acres—or 50 percent—of the lodgepole pine.

Various defoliating insects infest about 20 percent of the Deschutes

National Forest’s mixed conifer and ponderosa pine forest, and dwarf

mistletoe disease infects about 40 percent of its mixed conifer and

ponderosa pine. Root disease also affects about 20 percent of this forest

and, according to Forest Service officials, it is a major problem on the

Idaho Panhandle National Forest, as it is elsewhere in the interior West.

In addition to these three symptoms of poor forest health, national forests

in the interior West are facing invasions of nonnative plants and diseases

that outcompete and displace native vegetation in many areas. For

example, in the Lincoln National Forest, 12 aggressive nonnative plant

species have been identified as occupying approximately 5,200 acres

across two ranger districts. Forest officials saw such plants spread by

30 percent in the early 1990s and expect this trend to increase. Various

noxious plants, such as knapweeds and thistles, were estimated in 1996 to

cover at least 5,000 acres of the forests and grasslands of the

Arapaho/Roosevelt National Forest, and are expected to nearly triple their

coverage by the year 2000. On the Deschutes National Forest, native

shrubs and plants associated with dominant tree species are being

displaced by invasive nonnative noxious plants at a rate that forest

officials estimate is tripling every year. Similarly, nonnative diseases, to

which many native tree species have thus far evolved little resistance, have

spread. For example, white pine blister rust, a disease accidentally

introduced from Europe in 1910, primarily caused the loss of 656,000

acres—or 90 percent—of the western white pine forests on the Idaho

Panhandle National Forest and 7,900 acres—or 64 percent—of the

whitebark pine forests. The disease has also been found at every surveyed

plot on the Boise National Forest, where the incidence of infection in tree

stands varied and was as high as nearly 70 percent. This same disease was

detected on the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico in 1990.

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Suppression of Historically

Frequent Wildfires Is the

Primary Cause of Many

Current Tree Stand

Conditions

As early as the mid-19th century, European American settlers’ activities

began to affect the interior West’s ecology, introducing changes that

gradually weakened the health of the region’s national forests. These

changes occurred in response to several factors that have generally

excluded fire from these forests, preventing it from playing its historical

role of limiting the forests’ density, clearing undergrowth and downed

material, and influencing species composition. These factors include

(1) extensive livestock grazing and changes in land use first introduced by

European American settlers in the late 1800s, which not only eliminated

much of the grass that historically carried fire through the forests’

undergrowth but also ended Native Americans practice of setting such

fires for hunting game and other purposes; (2) past timber-harvesting

methods that selectively removed the larger, more valuable, and more

accessible trees or removed all of the trees from a timber-harvesting site at

one time (clear-cutting), allowing other species to increase; and

(3) invasions by nonnative plants, insects, and diseases. However, while

these factors generally laid the groundwork for and set in motion

significant changes in these forests’ ecologies, according to several

studies, the primary factor currently contributing to unhealthy forests in

the region has been the Forest Service’s decades-old policy of suppressing

fire on the national forests.5

Fire suppression was first practiced to protect early settlements from the

risk of uncontrollable wildfires. Later, it was used as an agricultural

technique to increase the number of trees available for timber harvesting.

But without frequent fires, vegetation accumulated so that many stands

have become denser, and less fire-tolerant tree species have become more

prevalent. As the forests’ density and composition have changed, stands

have become more susceptible to drought and to the incidence of insects

and disease, including native ones that have historically played an

important role in the evolution—particularly in the decomposition and

succession cycles—of forest tree stands. Native insects and diseases

sustain the health of forest stands so long as their levels remain within

their historical ranges of variability. But contiguous areas of dense stands

provide opportunities for insects and diseases to exceed their historical

ranges and spread across large areas. In addition, invasions by nonnative

plants and diseases have sometimes exacerbated problems arising from

the other causes.

5

For a fuller description of the role of Native American and European settlement in the evolution of

interior western national forests and other forestlands in the United States, see Douglas W. MacCleery,

American Forests: A History of Resiliency and Recovery, Forest Service and the Forest History

Society, FS-540 (Durham, N.C.: 1993) and Stephen J. Pyne, Fire in America: A Cultural History of

Wildland and Rural Fire, 1997 ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).

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Tree Stand Conditions

Threaten Forest Resources

Current tree stand conditions and the continuing absence of historically

occurring frequent wildfires threaten various national forest resources in

the interior West. For example, according to a 1998 analysis by the

Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, of the 146

threatened, endangered, or rare plant species found in the coterminous

states for which there is conclusive information on fire effects, 135 species

benefit from wildfire or are found in fire-adapted ecosystems.6

Furthermore, according to a 1994 Northern Arizona University study,

increases in density and changes in species composition alter soil

moisture, as well as the availability of nutrients and water for plants and

animals, watershed functioning and stream flow, and water quality,

affecting both terrestrial and aquatic species. Experts have also expressed

concern about the possibility that such changes will accelerate mortality

among the remaining older ponderosa pines and other trees.

Catastrophic Wildfires

Are a Serious

Consequence of

Current Tree Stand

Conditions in the

Interior Western

National Forests

The Forest Service estimates that 39 million acres of national forestlands

in the interior West are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire because of

denser stands and related conditions. As a result, the number and size of

large, intense fires have grown over the last decade, resulting in higher fire

suppression and preparedness costs and greater damage. Such fires, which

are increasingly unstoppable, threaten not only the sustainability of

national forest resources, but also human health, lives, property, and

infrastructure in nearby communities. Experts have estimated that a

window of only 10 to 25 years is available for taking effective action before

widespread, long-term damage from such fires occurs.

Catastrophic Wildfires Are

Increasing Because of

Changing Tree Stand

Conditions

In the currently denser stands of the national forests in the interior West,

where many smaller dead and dying trees now often form fuel “ladders” to

the crowns of larger trees—and where such stands are often continuous

rather than separated by stands that have recently been thinned by

fire—wildfires have increasingly become large, intense, and catastrophic.

Our analysis of the Forest Service’s data shows that the agency was highly

effective in suppressing fires on the national forests for about 75 years

after 1910, reducing substantially the number of national forest acres

burned annually, over 90 percent of which have been in the interior West.

6

Bill Leenhouts, “Assessment of Biomass Burning in the Coterminous United States,” Fish and

Wildlife Service, Conservation Ecology, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1998), citing analysis of data presented in Effects

of Fire on Threatened and Endangered Plants: An Annotated Bibliography, U.S. Department of the

Interior, National Biological Service, Information and Technology Report 2 (Washington, D.C.: 1995).

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However, figure 2.3 shows that recently the agency’s efforts have been less

effective.

Figure 2.3: Number of National Forest Acres Burned by Fire, 1910-97

1935 1955 1975 1995

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

Fiscal year

Acres

Note: The number of acres represents the 10-year rolling average at each point. Since 1990,

90 percent of national forest acres burned by fire were in the interior West.

Source: GAO’s presentation of data from the Forest Service.

As figure 2.3 shows, over the last decade, the number of acres of national

forestlands burned by wildfires has begun to increase, reversing the trend

of the previous three-quarters of a century. This is because excessive

accumulated fuels have made fires larger and more intense, as shown in

figure 2.4.

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Figure 2.4: Number and Total Acres Burned by Large Wildfires on All National Forests, 1984-95

'84 '85 '86 '87 '88 '89 '90 '91 '92 '93 '94 '95

0

20

40

60

80

100

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

Fiscal year

Fires Acres

Fires Acres

Note:10 year rolling average. Since 1990, 91 percent of the large fires (those burning 1,000 acres

or more) and 96 percent of the acres burned were in the interior West.

Source: GAO’s presentation of data from the Forest Service.

As shown in figure 2.4, since 1984, the average annual number of fires on

national forests that burn 1,000 acres or more has increased from 25 to 80,

and the number of total acres burned (including acres on nearby lands) by

these fires has more than quadrupled, from 164,000 to 765,000. Since 1990,

91 percent of these large fires and 96 percent of the acres they burned

were in the interior West.

In 1995, the Forest Service estimated that 39 million acres, or about

one-third of all lands it manages in the interior West—more than ever

known before and more than in all other regions of the country

combined—are now at high risk of large, uncontrollable, catastrophic

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wildfire. According to agency officials, virtually all of these lands are

located in the lower-elevation, frequent-fire forests of the interior West

that have historically been dominated by ponderosa pine. These forests

are particularly susceptible to such fires because, as stated in a 1995

internal agency report,7

 far more cycles of fire (up to 10) were suppressed

in these forests than in the higher-elevation, lodgepole-pine-dominated

forests—where generally only one or no fire cycle was suppressed. Figure

2.5 shows locations in the interior West identified by experts outside the

Forest Service where the risks of fire have been rated medium or high.

Areas currently at medium risk are included because fuels can further

accumulate on them so that, over time, they may become high-risk areas.

7

Fire Economics Assessment Report, USDA, Forest Service (Washington, D.C.: 1995).

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Figure 2.5: Western Forestlands at Medium and High Risk of Catastrophic Fire

Medium Risk

High Risk 

Source: American Forests.

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Catastrophic Wildfires

Threaten the Sustainability

of Forest Resources and

People

Compared with other forest fires, catastrophic wildfires burn many more

acres, destroy much more timber and wildlife habitat, and subject exposed

soils to substantial erosion during subsequent rains, damaging water

quality. As a result, catastrophic wildfires compromise the forests’ ability

to sustain timber, outdoor recreation, clean water, and other uses.

These increasing numbers of larger, more intense fires also pose hazards

to human health, safety, and property. For example, 14 firefighters lost

their lives in the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado, which—because of

its size and intensity—was able to rapidly surround them. Although

investigation reports of this fire did not identify fuel levels as a causal

factor in the fatalities, they cited highly flammable and hazardous fuels as

a contributing factor. This fire did not originate in a frequent-fire

ponderosa stand, but in a stand of a different species, indicating that

catastrophic wildfire hazards are not limited to stands dominated by

ponderosa.

The hazards to human health, life, and property are especially acute along

the national forests’ boundaries, where population has grown rapidly in

recent years—an area termed the “wildland/urban interface.” Because

smoke from such fires contains substantial amounts of fine particulate

matter and other hazardous pollutants, the fires can pose significant health

risks to people living in this interface. Such fires also threaten

infrastructure vital to nearby human communities. For example, the 1996

Buffalo Creek fire, which burned several thousand acres and threatened

private property in the wildland/urban interface southwest of Denver, left

forest soils subject to extreme erosion. Subsequent repeated rainstorms

washed what ordinarily would have been several years’ worth of sediment

into a reservoir that supplies Denver with water. As a result, the Denver

Water Board has estimated that it will incur several million dollars in

ongoing expenses for dredging the reservoir and treating the water—an

amount several times greater than the cost of fighting the fire.

Catastrophic Fires Are

Increasingly Costly

The growing number of large wildfires and acres burned—coupled with

the increasing complexity of suppression in the wildland/urban

interface—has greatly increased the Forest Service’s costs of fighting fires,

as shown in figure 2.6.

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Figure 2.6: Forest Service’s Expenditures for Wildfire Suppression, Fiscal Years 1986-94

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

100

150

200

250

300

350

Fiscal year

Dollars in millions

Note: The expenditures for each year represent the 10-year rolling average in constant 1994

dollars. Since 1990, 95 percent of these expenditures have been in the interior West.

Source: GAO’s presentation of the Forest Service’s latest available data.

As figure 2.6 indicates, from fiscal year 1986 through fiscal year 1994, the

10-year rolling average of annual costs for fighting fires grew from

$134 million to $335 million in constant 1994 dollars, a 150-percent

increase. Since 1990, 95 percent of these costs were incurred in the

interior West.

Moreover, as shown in figure 2.7, the costs associated with preparedness,

including the costs of keeping equipment and personnel ready to fight

fires, have also been increasing.

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Figure 2.7: Forest Service’s Expenditures for Wildfire Preparedness, Fiscal Years 1992-97

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997

180

200

220

240

260

280

300

320

340

Fiscal year

Dollars in millions

Note: For 1994, the last year for which figures by region were available, over 90 percent of these

expenditures were in the interior West.

Source: Forest Service.

As figure 2.7 indicates, for the 6 fiscal years from 1992 through 1997, fire

preparedness costs increased by 72 percent, from $189 million to

$326 million.8

 However, even though expenditures for both suppression

and preparedness have increased in recent years, the agency’s fiscal year

2000 budget proposal calls for maintaining the current funding levels for

both. Given the growing threats of catastrophic wildfire, the agency’s

budget proposal notes that maintaining the current funding level for

8

Federal Lands: Information About Land Management Agencies’ Wildfire Preparedness Activities

(GAO/RCED-98-48R, Dec. 18, 1997) and Federal Lands: Wildfire Preparedness and Suppression

Expenditures for Fiscal Years 1993 Through 1997 (GAO/T-RCED-98-247, Aug. 4, 1998).

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preparedness will result in increased risks of injury and loss of life to both

the public and firefighters.9

Time Is Running Out for

Addressing the

Catastrophic Wildfire

Problem

Many experts believe that efforts to resolve the growing threats of

catastrophic wildfires are in a race against time. According to a 1993

assessment of forest health in the interior West published in 1994, only a

“brief window of opportunity” of perhaps 15 to 30 years exists for effective

management intervention before damage from uncontrollable wildfires

becomes widespread.10 More than 5 of those years have already passed,

leaving only about 10 to 25 years remaining. While some future

catastrophic wildfires may be inevitable and the amount of time remaining

to address this problem is uncertain, experts agree that the solution, like

the causes, will be largely the result of human choice and public policy. As

the Forest Service noted, citing the 1994 National Commission on Wildfire

Disasters,

“Uncontrollable wildfire should be seen as a failure of land management and public policy,

not as an unpredictable act of nature. The size, intensity, destructiveness and cost of . . .

wildfires . . . is no accident. It is an outcome of our attitudes and priorities. . . . The fire

situation will become worse rather than better unless there are changes in land

management priority at all levels.”

9

FY 2000 Budget Justification for the Committee on Appropriations, USDA, Forest Service (Feb. 1999).

10Assessing Forest Ecosystem Health in the Inland West, Forest Policy Center (Washington, D.C.:

1994).

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Recent Agency Actions to Address

Catastrophic Wildfires Are Important but

May Be Too Little, Too Late

In the last decade, the Forest Service has undertaken several actions to

better understand and reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires on

national forests in the interior West. The Congress has been increasingly

supportive of these efforts. Nonetheless, the agency may not be able to

achieve its announced goal of adequately resolving the problem by the end

of fiscal year 2015. Our analysis of the agency’s plans and data indicates

that as many as 10 million acres may remain at high risk at that time

because the agency will need to divide its planned efforts and resources

between reducing accumulated fuels on high-risk areas in the interior

West and maintaining current low-risk conditions on other national

forestlands.

The Agency Has

Recently Taken

Important Steps to

Address Catastrophic

Wildfires

In recent years, the Forest Service has taken steps to address the

increasing threat of catastrophic wildfires on national forests. For

instance, in 1990, the agency, along with other federal and state agencies,

initiated a forest health monitoring program to better identify tree stand

conditions, including outbreaks of insects and diseases and dead trees. In

1995, it announced its intention to refocus its fire management program on

reducing accumulated fuels. Specifically, in a 1995 report, the agency

recommended increasing the number of acres on which accumulated fuels

are reduced annually from about 570,000 to about 3 million by fiscal year

2005.11 In 1997, the Chief of the Forest Service said it was the agency’s

intention to implement this recommendation, and the agency plans to

continue reducing fuels on 3 million acres per year through fiscal year

2015. By that time, the agency believes that it will have adequately reduced

the current high risks to national forestlands of uncontrollable, highly

destructive wildfires.

To implement its increased emphasis on reducing accumulated fuels, the

Forest Service restructured and redefined its fiscal year 1998 budget for

wildland fire management to better ensure that funds are available for

these activities.12 In fiscal year 1998, it announced that the funds

appropriated for reducing fuels would be allocated to (1) protect high-risk

wildland/urban interfaces, with special emphasis on areas subject to

frequent fires; (2) reduce accumulated fuels within and adjacent to

wilderness areas; and (3) lower the expected long-term costs of

suppressing wildfires by restoring and maintaining fire-adapted

11Course to the Future: Positioning Fire and Aviation Management, USDA, Forest Service (Washington,

D.C.: 1995).

12FY 1998 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, USDA, Forest Service

(Feb. 1997).

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ecosystems.13 In addition, the Forest Service has identified reducing

accumulated fuels on the national forests as a key measure of its

performance in accomplishing its high-priority, long-term strategic goal of

restoring and protecting forested ecosystems.14

In the past 5 years, the Forest Service—either alone or with the

Department of the Interior and other federal agencies—has issued several

reports (1) addressing the health of forests in the interior West as well as

in other regions of the country, including the health effects of fire

suppression and (2) proposing management approaches to more

efficiently and effectively reduce accumulated fuels.15 The agency has also

(1) revised its wildland fire management policy to more clearly spell out its

responsibilities and reimbursable costs so that nonfederal parties can

understand the consequences of not working with the agency to reduce

the risk of wildfire on their adjacent lands and (2) proposed a number of

demonstration projects in collaboration with willing nonfederal partners

to demonstrate the role of mechanical methods (including timber

harvesting) of removing materials to reduce accumulated fuels.

The Congress Has

Increasingly

Supported the

Agency’s Efforts

The Congress has supported the Forest Service’s efforts to reduce

accumulated fuels by, among other things, increasing the funding for this

activity. In addition, in acting on the agency’s fiscal year 1998 budget, the

House and Senate appropriations committees approved the Forest

Service’s budget restructuring to better ensure that funds are available for

reducing accumulated fuels. The committees also earmarked $8 million in

fiscal year 1998 for the agency and the Department of the Interior to begin

a multiyear program, called the Joint Fire Science Program, to gather

consistent information on accumulated fuels and ways to reduce them. In

January 1998, the agencies issued a plan for conducting this program.16

This plan called for the Forest Service and Interior to conduct and sponsor

13FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, USDA, Forest Service

(Feb. 1998).

14USDA Strategic Plan 1997-2002: A Healthy and Productive Nation in Harmony With the Land, Forest

Service Strategic Plan, USDA, Office of the Secretary (Sept. 30, 1997) and FY 1999 USDA Forest

Service Annual GPRA Performance Plan, USDA, Forest Service (Feb. 4, 1998).

15Healthy Forests for America’s Future: A Strategic Plan, USDA, Forest Service (Washington, D.C.:

1993); Fire Related Considerations and Strategies in Support of Ecosystem Management, USDA, Forest

Service (Washington, D.C.: 1993); Western Forest Health Initiative, USDA, Forest Service (Washington,

D.C.: 1994); Fire Economics Assessment Report, USDA, Forest Service (Washington, D.C.: 1995); and

Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review, Department of the Interior and USDA,

Forest Service (Washington, D.C.: 1995 and 1996).

16Joint Fire Science Plan, Department of the Interior and USDA, Forest Service (Washington, D.C.:

1998).

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research and analysis projects aimed at better understanding (1) the

location and extent of problems with accumulated fuels, (2) the effects on

other resources of different approaches to reducing these fuels, (3) the

relative cost-effectiveness of these different approaches, and (4) the

importance of compatible interagency approaches to monitoring and

reporting efforts to reduce fuels. Recently, the initial projects under this

multiyear program were authorized and begun. Additionally, the Congress,

in its fiscal year 1999 appropriation to the Forest Service, approved the

agency’s request to conduct “stewardship contracting demonstration

projects” in collaboration with willing nonfederal partners. These projects

are intended to demonstrate the role of mechanical methods (including

timber harvesting) of removing materials to reduce accumulated fuels. The

Congress also authorized the Forest Service, in implementing these

demonstration projects, to experiment with alternative contracting

procedures.

Actions Planned to

Date May Not Be

Sufficient or Timely

Enough to Achieve

Agency Goals

Although the Forest Service, with the active support of the Congress, is

taking steps to address the growing risks of catastrophic wildfires on the

national forests, it may not be able to adequately resolve the problem by

the end of fiscal year 2015. In particular, the agency’s current plans may

significantly underestimate the number of acres on which fuels must be

reduced annually to adequately reduce fire hazards. Our analysis of the

agency’s initial plans and data indicates that as many as about 10 million

acres in the interior West may still have excessive fuel levels and still be at

high risk of uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfire at the end of fiscal year

2015.

This shortfall may occur largely because the Forest Service has not linked

its criteria for allocating the funds appropriated to reduce accumulated

fuels to its actual allocation of these funds. The current and planned

allocations largely emphasize maintaining satisfactory conditions on lands

outside the frequent-fire forests of the interior West that currently have

low levels of accumulated fuels so that conditions on them do not also

become hazardous. To maintain satisfactory conditions on these other

forests, the Forest Service will need to continue reducing fuels on them, at

a rate of about 1 million acres per year. Thus, the agency’s plans to reduce

fuels nationally on 3 million acres per year will provide for only about

2 million acres on national forests in the interior West. This level of

accomplishment will likely fall short of the levels needed to meet the

agency’s goals for the interior West’s frequent-fire forests. Moreover,

despite budget allocation criteria emphasizing the restoration of high-risk

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interface areas within the interior West’s frequent fire forest ecosystems,

such restoration activities will be limited by incomplete information. As

the agency noted in February 1999, it has not yet mapped these interface

areas with the precision needed to identify and design individual

high-priority fuel reduction projects.

Additionally, despite earlier plans to steadily increase its fuel reduction

efforts, the agency is now intending to scale back the work, according to

its fiscal year 2000 budget proposal. Initially, it planned to increase its

efforts nationwide from about 1.5 million acres in fiscal year 1999 to

1.8 million acres in fiscal year 2000, building toward 3 million acres per

year by fiscal year 2005. However, in its recently proposed fiscal year 2000

budget, it called for reducing fuels on only 1.3 million acres, or on fewer

acres than planned for the current fiscal year.17

However, it should be noted that the Forest Service could very likely

substantially reduce fire hazards without reducing fuels on all 39 million

acres currently at high risk of catastrophic fire. For example, it might be

able to construct fuelbreaks—i.e., areas where excessive fuels have been

removed in strategic locations to isolate areas that still have excessive

fuels—and thus limit the spread of large fires. But the Forest Service has

not yet developed a general strategy for selectively reducing fuels, nor for

implementing any alternative strategic approach that would allow it to

systematically assign priorities to areas and thus safely decide not to

reduce fuels on some lower-priority areas. Until it develops such a

strategy, it has no basis for eliminating any current high-risk areas from its

fuel reduction efforts, nor can it adequately evaluate the relative

effectiveness or efficiency of its current efforts.

The Forest Service stated in 1996 that its forest planning efforts did not

adequately consider historical fire disturbance cycles. The purpose of the

Joint Fire Science Program is to obtain information critical to planning

and undertaking effective agency actions. However, an agency official

involved in implementing the program said 10 years will be needed to

complete it and that, as it is completed, national forests will use its

findings to amend or revise current individual forest plans. Efforts to

revise forest plans can take several years.

Progress to date in gathering data under the program has proved difficult.

In September 1998, the agency said that under the Joint Fire Science Plan,

17FY 2000 Budget Justification for the Committee on Appropriations, USDA, Forest Service

(Feb. 1999).

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it would complete an initial mapping of the locations and levels of existing

hazardous conditions on national forests before the end of the year.

However, in February 1999, the agency said that the results of initial

efforts to map these conditions still needed additional review and that,

even when the initial mapping was completed, the data would not yet be

precise enough to provide a basis for ranking and designing site-specific

fuel reduction projects. Although the Forest Service is experimenting with

using this type of mapping information in conjunction with other, more

local analyses to rank and design individual fuel reduction projects in the

Idaho Panhandle area, it has not yet developed a consistent, agencywide

mapping approach.

The recently approved stewardship contracting demonstration

projects—for testing new partnership and contracting procedures for

reducing fuels—are in the initial selection and analysis stage. Critical to

the usefulness of these demonstration projects will be the Forest Service’s

development, at their outset, of a common framework for systematically

evaluating their effectiveness. Such a framework is necessary for the

agency to gather and summarize consistent information on the projects’

implementation, results, and lessons learned so that the lessons can be

applied more generally to the agency’s future fuel reduction efforts.

However, no common evaluation framework has been developed yet, even

though many of the demonstration projects are soon to be implemented.

Page 40 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
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The Agency Lacks a Cohesive Strategy for

Addressing Several Barriers to Effective

Action

Without adequate data, the Forest Service has not been able to develop a

cohesive strategy for addressing numerous policy, programmatic, and

budgetary factors that present significant barriers to the accomplishment

of its fuel reduction goals. These factors include (1) difficulties in

reconciling needed actions with other legislatively mandated stewardship

objectives to protect resources, (2) program incentives that tend to focus

on areas of that may not present the greatest wildfire hazards,

(3) statutorily defined contracting mechanisms that do not facilitate the

removal of many hazardous fuels, and (4) costs for reducing fuels on

high-risk areas that may be as high as $12 billion between now and the end

of fiscal year 2015. The agency has not systematically identified the steps

or activities to be undertaken in order overcome these barriers, nor has it

developed a schedule for accomplishing them.

Several Barriers Exist

to Effective Agency

Action

Methods to reduce fuels can be difficult to reconcile with agencies’ other

responsibilities. In dense tree stands, fires are difficult to control and may

escape. In addition, controlled burning on a scale consistent with that of

historically frequent fires is difficult to use without violating air quality

standards established under the Clean Air Act. However, mechanically

removing fuels (through commercial timber harvesting, among other

means), can also adversely affect wildlife habitat and water quality in

many areas and, in any event, areas with commercially valuable timber are

often not those where the greatest wildfire hazards exists. In addition, the

agency’s fuel reduction program rewards managers for the number of

acres on which they reduce fuels, without taking into account the relative

hazards on those acres; it does not reward managers for reducing fuels on

the most hazardous acres. Finally, the agency’s statutorily defined

contracting mechanisms were primarily designed for removing high-value

timber, not excess accumulated fuels that are generally low in value and

can be costly to remove. As a result, the cost to the Forest Service for

reducing fuels on the 39 million acres at high risk may be about $12 billion

between now and the end of fiscal year 2015, or an average of about

$725 million annually, and these costly activities will have to be repeated

in the future.

Fuel Reduction Activities

Are Sometimes Difficult to

Reconcile With Other

Stewardship Objectives

Activities for reducing accumulated fuels can sometimes be difficult to

reconcile with other legislatively mandated stewardship objectives,

including meeting clean water quality standards and protecting threatened

and endangered species. According to an agency official, in the past, the

Forest Service sometimes used chemicals (herbicides) to kill

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Action

undergrowth, which could then be burned. Combining these two methods

was often less costly than mechanically removing the undergrowth. The

agency has, however, largely stopped using herbicides because of

concerns about their adverse effects on water quality and human health.

Additionally, because large ponderosa pine trees were selectively

harvested and fire was suppressed in the Deschutes National Forest in

Oregon, ponderosa stands have largely been replaced by abnormally dense

stands of Douglas fir. However, many of the Douglas fir stands cannot be

removed because they now provide habitat for the threatened northern

spotted owl, whose naturally occurring habitat on the western side of the

Cascade mountain range has been significantly reduced by timber

harvesting.

Many agency and outside experts believe that, ultimately, avoiding

catastrophic wildfires and restoring forest health in the interior West will

require reintroducing fire through burning under controlled conditions to

reduce fuels. However, the use of controlled fire in the interior West has

two limitations. First, winter snows limit the time available for burning,

and dry summer weather creates a high risk that, given massive levels of

accumulated fuels, controlled fires will escape and become

uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires. Second, several officials and

experts we spoke with believe that emissions from controlled fires on the

scale that is needed to adequately reduce fuels would violate federal air

quality standards under the Clean Air Act. Hence, in their view, the act

would not permit the desired level of burning either immediately or

possibly even in the long term. The Forest Service and the Environmental

Protection Agency, which administers the Clean Air Act, are currently

conducting a 3-year experiment to better determine the impact of

emissions from controlled fires.

For these reasons, many experts agree that fuels must be reduced in most

areas of the interior West, at least initially, by mechanical means, including

commercial timber harvesting, in conjunction with controlled burning. The

Forest Service currently uses its timber sales management program to

reduce accumulated fuels.18 However, the use of timber harvesting to

reduce fuels has been limited by concerns about its adverse effects on

other stewardship objectives. Specifically, in fiscal year 1997, timber

harvesting was used to reduce fuels on only about 95,000 acres, or fewer

than 5 percent of the acres on which fuels will need to be reduced

annually to achieve the agency’s long-term goal. Forest Service officials

18FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, USDA, Forest Service

(Feb. 1998).

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told us that it was not likely that commercial timber harvesting could be

increased enough to adequately reduce fuels on the vast acreage needing

such reductions.

Incentives in the Timber

and Fuel Reduction

Programs Tend to Focus

Efforts on Areas of Lesser

Hazard

Moreover, mechanical removals under both the timber sales management

program and the fuel reduction program funded by appropriations

currently involve incentives that tend to focus efforts on areas that may

not present the greatest fire hazards. For example, under its fuel reduction

program, the Forest Service’s lone performance indicator measures the

number of acres treated. Agency field staff told us that funding for forests

often depends on their ability to contribute to the agency’s acreage targets.

As a result, forest staff often focus on areas where the costs of reducing

fuels are low so that they can reduce fuels on more acres, rather than on

those areas with the highest fire hazards, including especially the

wildland/urban interfaces. These high-hazard areas often have significantly

higher per-acre costs because of limitations on the use of less expensive

controlled fires as a tool to reduce the accumulated fuels. Although the

Forest Service is considering making changes to its current performance

indicator, it has not yet done so.

Timber harvesting may make useful contributions to reducing

accumulated fuels in many circumstances. However, reducing fuels with

the funds allocated for timber sales management may also provide an

incentive for forests to focus on less critical areas. The Forest Service

stresses that its timber sales management program is increasingly being

used for efforts to improve forest health, including efforts to prevent

catastrophic fires.19 The agency relies on timber production to fund many

of its programs and activities, and all three of its budget allocation criteria

for timber activities relate solely to the volume of timber produced or

offered. As a result, as forest officials told us, they tend to (1) focus on

areas with high-value commercial timber rather than on areas with high

fire hazards or (2) include more large, commercially valuable trees in a

timber sale than are necessary to reduce the accumulated fuels. Similarly,

an interagency team that reviewed the implementation of the Emergency

Salvage Timber Sale Program observed that some Forest Service

personnel focused more on harvesting timber than on protecting forested

ecosystems.20 This tendency of some agency personnel was further

19National Summary: Forest Management Program Report for Fiscal Year 1997, USDA, Forest Service,

FS-627 (July 1998).

20Interagency Salvage Program Review, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service (Silver Spring, Md., Oct. 8, 1996).

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documented in a 1999 report by the Department of Agriculture’s Office of

Inspector General.21

Statutorily Defined

Contracting Mechanisms

Do Not Facilitate the

Removal of Many

Hazardous Fuels

Most of the trees that need to be removed to reduce accumulated fuels are

small in diameter and have little or no commercial value. For example, to

return experimental forest plots near Flagstaff, Arizona, to historical

conditions, 37 tons per acre of nonmarketable trees and vegetation had to

be disposed of by being placed in a pit and burned. However, the agency’s

largely statutorily defined contracting procedures were not designed to

(1) facilitate the systematic removal of large volumes of low-value material

over a number of years, (2) readily combine funds for conducting timber

sales with funds for reducing accumulated fuels, or (3) allow contractors

to retain this low-value material to partially offset the costs of its removal.

More specifically, the agency’s two principal contracting procedures for

removing materials from national forests are (1) competitively bid timber

sale contracts under which the party removing the material purchases it at

fair market value and expects to sell it for a profit and (2) service

contracts, funded by appropriations, which do not involve selling the

material, but merely paying a contractor for removing it. The National

Forest Management Act of 1976 generally does not allow materials worth

more than $10,000 to be removed from national forests under service

contracts; instead, such materials must generally be removed under

competitively bid timber sale contracts.22 However, low-value materials

are unattractive to timber purchasers. As a result, the value of this

contracting procedure for reducing low-value fuels is quite limited.

While the materials to be removed may not be valuable enough for

contractors to make a profit by purchasing them, the materials often have

some lesser value. If purchasers could keep this material, they could apply

its lesser value to offset at least part of their costs for removing it. They

could then charge the Forest Service less for removal, saving the

government money while reducing fuels on more acres for any given level

of appropriated funding. However, the agency generally does not have the

authority to trade goods (in the form of low-value forest materials) for a

service (such as removing them).23 Because of these restrictions, in 1998,

21Forest Service Timber Sale Environmental Analysis Requirements, Evaluation Report No.

08801-10-At, USDA, Office of Inspector General (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 1999).

2216 U.S.C. 472a.

23See Paul C. Ringgold, Land Stewardship Contracting in the National Forests: A Community Guide to

Existing Authorities, Pinchot Institute for Conservation (Washington, D.C.: 1998).

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Agriculture’s Office of General Counsel determined that only 6 of 23

projects proposed by the Forest Service to demonstrate, among other

things, the role of timber harvesting in reducing accumulated fuels, could

proceed under the agency’s existing statutory authority. The remaining

projects would, among other things, have involved removing material of

greater total value than is allowed under service contracts or letting

contractors keep some material in exchange for removing it. In the Fiscal

Year 1999 Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental

Appropriations Act, the Congress authorized the Forest Service, through

fiscal year 2002, to enter into 28 individual demonstration project

contracts under which (1) the value of the material removed may be used

by the contractor to offset the costs of removal, and (2) there is no

limitation on the value of the material to be removed. However, the more

general authority temporarily granted to the agency in the early 1990s to

enter into “land stewardship contracts”—under which contractors were

allowed to retain material they removed in exchange for achieving desired

conditions on the national forests—has not been renewed.24

Costs for Removing

Hazardous Fuels Will Be

Very High

Because the materials removed through fuel reduction efforts often have

low or no value, the revenue they generate will not cover the costs of their

removal. Consequently, agency officials and outside analysts agree that

reducing accumulated fuels in the interior West is likely to require

hundreds of millions of dollars a year in appropriated funds. Our

preliminary analysis of the Forest Service’s fuel reduction costs—which,

according to the agency’s data average about $320 per acre for the

combination of burning and mechanical removal that is necessary in the

interior West—indicates that as much as $12 billion, or about $725 million

a year, may be needed to treat the 39 million acres at high risk of

uncontrollable wildfire by the end of fiscal year 2015. These costs might be

less if the agency reduced current hazards on the 39 million acres

selectively, in accordance with a systematic strategy and set of priorities.

For fiscal year 1999, the agency requested and received $65 million to

reduce accumulated fuels—or less than one-tenth of the annual level that

may be needed to accomplish its goal. At that time, it projected that it

would increase its request to $102 million for fiscal year 2000, in keeping

with its announced intention to increase its fuel reduction efforts through

fiscal year 2015. However, in its recently released fiscal year 2000 budget

24See Forest Service Timber Sale Practices and Procedures: Analysis of Alternative Systems,

Congressional Research Service, 95-1077 ENR (Washington, D.C.: 1995) and M. Mitsos, Improving

Administrative Flexibility and Efficiency in the National Forest Timber Sale Program: Scoping Session

Summary, Pinchot Institute (Washington, D.C.: 1996).

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request, the agency instead asked for the same $65 million it received for

fiscal year 1999. The agency stated that, because fuels have already been

reduced on the least costly areas, this funding level will provide for even

fewer acres than it did in the previous year.

Moreover, our analysis of the costs to reduce fuels on national forest acres

identified as being at high risk examined only the “first-time” costs of

reducing fuels on them. Fuels will have to be reduced periodically in order

to maintain forest health. For example, in 1998, the Wenatchee National

Forest in Washington stated that it would have to begin reducing fuels on

areas treated only 10 to 15 years ago because undergrowth had

accumulated in the interim, posing new fire hazards. Forest Service

officials we spoke with agreed with a 1997 observation by the Secretary of

the Interior that substantial efforts to reduce fuels will have to be repeated

three to five times or more on these lands over many decades, although

the later repetitions may be less costly.

The Agency Lacks a

Cohesive Strategy for

Addressing Barriers

We have previously noted that the Forest Service lacks accountability in

implementing its ecosystem management approach to ensure sustainable

multiple uses of the national forests. Specifically, we noted that (1) its

goals and objectives under this approach are not linked to performance

measures to ensure their accomplishment and (2) it lacks a goal or

schedule for achieving accountability for its performance.25 This

observation applies equally to the agency’s efforts to address the threat

posed by catastrophic wildfires to ensuring sustainable multiple uses. For

instance, as noted in this report, the incentive implicit in its current

performance measure for fuel reduction tends not to focus activities on

the most hazardous areas. Thus, the agency has no meaningful

performance measure and goal related to reducing catastrophic wildfire

hazards. Such a meaningful performance measure and goal are critical if

the agency is to develop a cohesive strategy for reducing accumulated

fuels and be held accountable for accomplishing this strategy.

According to Forest Service officials, the agency has not established such

a meaningful performance measure and goal for reducing fuels because it

lacks sufficient data on the location of acres in national forests at high risk

of catastrophic fire, as well as on the cost-effectiveness and effects on

other resources of methods for reducing them. Our observations at the

forests we visited confirmed this lack of data. Forest officials could only

25Forest Service: Lack of Financial and Performance Accountability Has Resulted in Inefficiency and

Waste (GAO/T-RCED/AIMD-98-135, Mar. 26, 1998).

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estimate or tell us in general terms how many acres they believed were at

such risk, but could not identify particular high-risk locations or

high-priority areas with any significant precision. Agency officials believe

that having such data, which the Joint Fire Science Program is intended to

identify, will better enable them both to develop a meaningful

performance goal and measure and to better reconcile different fuel

reduction approaches with other stewardship objectives. Similarly, they

believe that data from the stewardship contracting demonstration projects

will help them identify changes in statutorily defined contracting

procedures that would better facilitate the accomplishment of fuel

reduction goals.

However, the agency has not systematically identified a cohesive set of

activities or steps that it will undertake to obtain needed data, better

reconcile objectives, or identify desirable changes in contracting

procedures. Nor has it outlined a schedule for accomplishing these tasks.

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Chapter 5 

Conclusions and Recommendation

Conclusions We believe that the threats and costs associated with increasingly

uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires, together with the urgent need for

action to avoid them, make them the most serious immediate problem

related to the health of national forests in the interior West. We also

believe that the activities planned by the Forest Service may not be

sufficient and may not be completed during the estimated 10- to 25-year

“window of opportunity” remaining for effective action before damage

from uncontrollable wildfires becomes widespread. The tinderbox that is

now the interior West likely cannot wait that long for a cohesive strategy

to be implemented. Simply allowing nature to take its inevitable course

may cost more—not only for fire suppression, but also in human lives and

damage to natural resources, human health, property, and

infrastructure—than would undertaking strategic actions now.

The increasing number of uncontrollable and often catastrophic wildfires

in the interior West, as well as the significant costs to reduce growing

hazards to natural resources and human health, safety, property, and

infrastructure, present difficult policy decisions for the Forest Service and

the Congress: Does the agency request, and does the Congress

appropriate, the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that may be

required to fund an aggressive fuel reduction program? If enough is not

appropriated, what priorities should be established? How can the need for

reintroducing fire into frequent-fire forests and mechanical removals best

be reconciled with meeting air quality standards and other stewardship

objectives? What incentives and changes in statutorily defined contracting

procedures are needed to facilitate the mechanical removal of low-value

materials?

Such decisions should be based on a sound strategy that, in turn, depends

in large part on data being gathered under the Forest Service and Interior’s

Joint Fire Science Program and the Forest Service’s stewardship

contracting demonstration projects. With these data, the agency will be

able to establish more meaningful performance measures, priorities, and

goals for reducing fuels. It will also be better able to (1) reconcile different

fuel reduction approaches with its other stewardship objectives,

(2) identify changes in incentives and statutorily defined contracting

procedures that will better facilitate the accomplishment of fuel reduction

goals, and (3) determine the associated costs of different options for doing

so. All of these elements will be essential in the more cohesive agency

strategy needed to address the problem of catastrophic wildfires now

threatening the sustainability of multiple national forest uses and the

security of human life, health, property, and infrastructure in communities

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Conclusions and Recommendation

near those forests. However, because of concerns about the agency’s

accountability, we believe that the credibility of its efforts to devise such a

strategy hinge upon the establishment of a clearly understood schedule for

expeditiously developing and implementing this strategy.

Recommendation to

the Secretary of

Agriculture

We recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the Chief of the

Forest Service to develop, and formally communicate to the Congress, a

cohesive strategy for reducing and maintaining accumulated fuels on

national forests of the interior West at acceptable levels. We further

recommend that this strategy include (1) specific steps for (a) acquiring

the data needed to establish meaningful performance measures and goals

for reducing fuels, (b) identifying ways of better reconciling different fuel

reduction approaches with other stewardship objectives, and (c)

identifying changes in incentives and statutorily defined contracting

procedures that would better facilitate the accomplishment of fuel

reduction goals; (2) a schedule indicating dates for completing each of

these steps; and (3) estimates of the potential and likely overall and annual

costs of accomplishing this strategy based on different options identified

in the strategy as being available for doing so.

Page 49 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

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Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

Page 51 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

See GAO comment 1.

Page 52 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

See GAO comment 2.

See GAO comment 3.

Page 53 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

See GAO comment 4.

See GAO comment 5.

See GAO comment 6.

See GAO comment 3.

See GAO comment 7.

See GAO comment 8.

Page 54 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

See GAO comment 9.

Now on p. 27.

Now on pp. 27-28.

See GAO comment 10.

Now on p. 32.

See GAO comment 11.

Now on p. 36.

Now on p. 38.

Now on p. 39.

Page 55 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

The following are GAO’s comments on the Forest Service’s letter dated

March 22, 1999.

GAO’s Comments 1. Our report notes that there is a lack of consensus on what constitutes

forest health. We have added language in our report to incorporate the

agency’s observation that greater community awareness and acceptance of

needed actions are important elements in implementing a successful fuel

reduction strategy. Moreover, we believe that the agency, through

improving the cohesiveness of its strategy, may provide communities and

those concerned about forest health with a clearer basis for both reaching

consensus on and accepting needed actions.

2. We do not presume that there is a broad scientific consensus

surrounding appropriate methods or techniques for dealing with fuel

build-up or agreement on the size of the areas where, and the time frames

when, such methods or techniques should be applied. Our report

recognizes that the agency is currently pursuing better answers to these

questions through the Joint Fire Science Program and other efforts, and

we have added clarifying language in our report to incorporate the

agency’s observation.

3. We agree that the other forest management activities, identified by the

Forest Service as contributing to overall forest health and as having an

impact on acres at risk of wildfire, should not overlooked and can be

important elements in the agency’s more cohesive strategy. For instance,

our report notes important interrelationships that the agency must

consider when balancing fuel reduction goals with other stewardship

objectives, such as preserving air and water quality.

4. We agree that expanding the Forest Service’s fuel reduction program

over the next few decades could significantly reduce the risk of

high-intensity fire and allow for the successful suppression of wildland fire

in areas where fuels have been reduced. However, as noted in our report,

the agency’s planned expansion of this program is not on schedule, and its

fiscal year 2000 budget request, compared with its fiscal year 1999

appropriation, will provide for reducing fuel on fewer acres, rather than on

more, as originally planned. We believe this change demonstrates the need

for the agency to better identify estimates of potential and likely costs to

accomplish a more cohesive strategy as recommended in our report.

Page 56 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

5. We did not evaluate the relationship between specific funding levels for

the Forest Service’s initial responses to wildfires and the resulting

likelihood of acreage lost to catastrophic wildfire. However, our report

notes that the agency’s fiscal year 2000 budget request will only maintain

current funding level for preparedness, not increase the funding for it.

According to the agency, maintaining the current funding level will

increase the risks of injuries and loss of life to the public and firefighters

next year. We believe this statement further supports our recommendation

that the agency needs to better identify estimates of potential and likely

costs to accomplish a more cohesive strategy.

6. Our report notes that fuel reduction is not required on every national

forest acre currently at high risk of catastrophic wildfire and that blocks

where fuels have been reduced, called fire breaks or fuel breaks, may

prevent fires from reaching high intensity or large size. However, we also

note that the Forest Service has not yet developed a general strategy for

constructing such fire breaks, nor for implementing any alternative

strategic approach that would allow it to systematically assign priorities to

areas and thus safely avoid reducing fuels on some of them. Until the

agency develops such a strategy, it has no basis for eliminating any current

high-risk areas from its fuel reduction efforts, nor can it adequately

evaluate the relative effectiveness or efficiency of its current efforts.

7. We agree that some of the acres at high risk will burn in the interior

West, thereby reducing fuels on them and lowering the total number of

acres remaining at high risk. However, as we point out in our report, in

many areas fuels will have to be reduced repeatedly. Moreover, as our

report points out, the concern about catastrophic wildfires is not just how

many acres they burn, but where those acres are located. In particular,

future catastrophic wildfires that (1) burn many acres in the

wildland/urban interface, taking lives and damaging human health,

property, or infrastructure; (2) destroy critical terrestrial or aquatic

habitat; or (3) needlessly destroy timber available for harvest should be

considered as part of the problem rather than as contributions to reducing

it.

8. We agree with the agency that it is important to maintain current

satisfactory conditions in regions other than the frequent-fire forests of the

interior West, including the Forest Service’s Southern Region, so that fire

risks in these areas do not also become hazardous to resources or people,

as many areas in the interior West are now. We also do not question the

level of funding for fuel reduction efforts in these other regions. Our report

Page 57 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

states, instead, that the acres in these other regions on which it plans to

maintain the current lower fuel levels must be taken into account when

determining the adequacy of the agency’s plans to reduce fuels on a total

of 3 million acres nationally each year.

9. We do not disagree that Joint Fire Science Program’s projects are

currently planned to be completed in 3 to 5 years. Instead, our report notes

an agency official’s estimate of how long they may actually take. In our

view, the project’s experience to date with mapping fire risks suggests that

tasks under this program may, in fact, take longer than currently planned.

This task, which was originally scheduled for completion in November

1998, is now, according to the agency’s comments on our draft report, not

projected to be completed until September 2000. Finally, we note that the

plan adopted in 1998 for carrying out the program provides for members

of its governing board to serve for 10 years.

10. We did not assess the extent to which the increase in the acreage

burned in the interior West over the last few years can be partly attributed

to more flexible suppression strategies. Nor do we question whether such

strategies may be an important element in the agency’s overall strategy to

reduce fuels. However, regardless of the reasons for the increases in the

acreage burned, substantially more acres are now burning unintentionally,

with increasing costs and threats to resources and people. The agency has

on several occasions concurred that this is a serious problem. For

instance, as we note in our report, the agency has stated in its fiscal year

2000 budget request that the risks of injuries and loss of life to the public

and firefighters will increase next year. Finally, we agree that these more

flexible suppression strategies are not acreage driven, but hazard based.

However, as we point out in our report, current incentives in the agency’s

main fuel reduction program are acreage driven, not hazard based, and

incentives in its timber program are largely driven by commercial rather

than safety considerations. Our report urges the development of a more

cohesive fuel reduction strategy that addresses ways to better integrate

these incentives around hazard reduction.

11. The Forest Service is correct in pointing out that the level of fuels was

not specifically identified as a cause of the fatalities in the investigative

reports on this fire and that the predominant vegetation type was not, in

this case, long-needle pine. However, according to the investigative

reports we reviewed, this was a very large, intense fire that spread to the

canopy (i.e., crowns of the trees), and highly flammable and hazardous

Page 58 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix I 

Comments From the Forest Service

fuels were a significant contributor to the fatalities.26 While our report

notes that long-needle pines such as ponderosa are a predominant forest

type at lower elevations in the interior West, the example serves to point

out that catastrophic wildfire hazards on national forests of the interior

West are not limited to this forest type. Our report considers all wildfire

hazards in the region and is not limited to fire hazards associated with any

specific type of tree stand or vegetation. Our purpose in citing this

example was simply to demonstrate that large, intense fires occurring on

the interior Western national forests can be life threatening, irrespective of

all of their causes and sources. We have added the language in the report

to reflect the agency’s comment about the fire and clarify the scope of our

report.

26Report of the South Canyon Fire Accident Investigation Team, Bureau of Land Management and

Forest Service (Aug. 17, 1994); and Fire Behavior Associated With the 1994 South Canyon Fire on

Storm King Mountain, Colorado, USDA, Forest Service, Research Paper RMRS-RP-9 (Ogden, Utah:

1998).

Page 59 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
Appendix II 

Major Contributors to This Report

Resources,

Community, and

Economic Division

Ryan T. Coles

Susan L. Conlon

Charles S. Cotton

Elizabeth R. Eisenstadt

Lynne L. Goldfarb

Brent L. Hutchison

Chester M. Joy

Hugo W. Wolter, Jr.

Office of the General

Counsel

Doreen Stolzenberg Feldman

(141261) Page 60 GAO/RCED-99-65 Catastrophic Wildfire Threats
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