Wildland Fire Management: Forest Service and Interior Need to Specify Steps and a Schedule for Identifying Long-Term Options and Their Costs
Published: 2005-02-17T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: Why GAO Did This Study
paragraphs: Over the past two decades, the number of acres burned by wildland fires has surged, often threatening human lives, property, and ecosystems. Past management practices, including a concerted federal policy in the 20th century of suppressing fires to protect communities and ecosystem resources, unintentionally resulted in steady accumulation of dense vegetation that fuels large, intense, wildland fires. While such fires are normal in some ecosystems, in others they can cause catastrophic damage to resources as well as to communities near wildlands known as the wildland-urban interface. GAO was asked to identify the (1) progress the federal government has made in responding to wildland fire threats and (2) challenges it will need to address within the next 5 years. This testimony is based primarily on GAO's report Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy (GAO-05-147), released on February 14, 2005.
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: Over the last 5 years, the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and land management agencies in the Department of the Interior, working with the Congress, have made important progress in responding to wildland fires. The agencies have adopted various national strategy documents addressing the need to reduce wildland fire risks; established a priority for protecting communities in the wildland-urban interface; and increased efforts and amounts of funding committed to addressing wildland fire problems, including preparedness, suppression, and fuel reduction on federal lands. In addition, the agencies have begun improving their data and research on wildland fire problems, made progress in developing long-needed fire management plans that identify actions for effectively addressing wildland fire threats at the local level, and improved federal interagency coordination and collaboration with nonfederal partners. The agencies also have strengthened overall accountability for their investments in wildland fire activities by establishing improved performance measures and a framework for monitoring results. While the agencies have adopted various strategy documents to address the nation's wildland fire problems, none of these documents constitutes a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the long-term options and related funding needed to reduce fuels in national forests and rangelands and to respond to wildland fire threats. Both the agencies and the Congress need a comprehensive assessment of the fuel reduction options and related funding needs to determine the most effective and affordable long-term approach for addressing wildland fire problems. Completing a cohesive strategy that identifies long-term options and needed funding will require finishing several efforts now under way, each with its own challenges. The agencies will need to finish planned improvements in a key data and modeling system--LANDFIRE--to more precisely identify the extent and location of wildland fire threats and to better target fuel reduction efforts. In implementing LANDFIRE, the agencies will need more consistent approaches to assessing wildland fire risks, more integrated information systems, and better understanding of the role of climate in wildland fire. In addition, local fire management plans will need to be updated with data from LANDFIRE and from emerging agency research on more cost-effective approaches to reducing fuels. Completing a new system designed to identify the most cost-effective means for allocating fire management budget resources--Fire Program Analysis--may help to better identify long-term options and related funding needs. Without completing these tasks, the agencies will have difficulty determining the extent and location of wildland fire threats, targeting and coordinating their efforts and resources, and resolving wildland fire problems in the most timely and cost-effective manner over the long term. A November 2004 report of the Western Governors' Association also called for completing a cohesive federal strategy to address wildland fire problems.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: I am pleased to be here today to discuss the status of the federal  government’s efforts to address our nation’s wildland fire problems. The  trend of increasing wildland fire threats to communities and ecosystems  that we reported on 5 years ago has been continuing. The average number  of acres burned by wildland fires annually from 2000 through 2003 was 56  percent greater than the average amount burned annually during the  1990s. Wildland fires are often necessary to restore ecosystems, but some  fires also can cause catastrophic damages to communities and  ecosystems. Experts believe that catastrophic damages from wildland fires  probably will continue to increase until an adequate long-term federal  response, coordinated with others, is implemented and has had time to  take effect.
My testimony today summarizes the findings of our report released this  week that discusses progress the federal government has made over the  last 5 years and key challenges it faces in developing and implementing a  long-term response to wildland fire problems. This report is based  primarily on over 25 reviews we conducted in recent years of federal  wildland fire management that focused largely on the activities of the  Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture and the land  management agencies in the Department of the Interior, which together  manage about 95 percent of all federal lands.
subsections: section_title: Background
paragraphs: Wildland fire triggered by lightning is a normal, inevitable, and necessary  ecological process that nature uses to periodically remove excess  undergrowth, small trees, and vegetation to renew ecosystem productivity.  However, various human land use and management practices, including  several decades of fire suppression activities, have reduced the normal  frequency of wildland fires in many forest and rangeland ecosystems and  have resulted in abnormally dense and continuous accumulations of  vegetation that can fuel uncharacteristically large and intense wildland  fires. Such large intense fires increasingly threaten catastrophic ecosystem  damage and also increasingly threaten human lives, health, property, and  infrastructure in the wildland-urban interface. Federal researchers  estimate that vegetative conditions that can fuel such fires exist on  approximately 190 million acres––or more than 40 percent––of federal  lands in the contiguous United States but could vary from 90 million to 200  million acres, and that these conditions also exist on many nonfederal  lands.
Our reviews over the last 5 years identified several weaknesses in the  federal government’s management response to wildland fire issues. These  weaknesses included the lack of a national strategy that addressed the  likely high costs of needed fuel reduction efforts and the need to prioritize  these efforts. Our reviews also found shortcomings in federal  implementation at the local level, where over half of all federal land  management units’ fire management plans did not meet agency  requirements designed to restore fire’s natural role in ecosystems  consistent with human health and safety. These plans are intended to  identify needed local fuel reduction, preparedness, suppression, and  rehabilitation actions. The agencies also lacked basic data, such as the  amount and location of lands needing fuel reduction, and research on the  effectiveness of different fuel reduction methods on which to base their  fire management plans and specific project decisions. Furthermore,  coordination among federal agencies and collaboration between these  agencies and nonfederal entities were ineffective. This kind of cooperation  is needed because wildland fire is a shared problem that transcends land  ownership and administrative boundaries. Finally, we found that better  accountability for federal expenditures and performance in wildland fire  management was needed. Agencies were unable to assess the extent to  which they were reducing wildland fire risks or to establish meaningful  fuel reduction performance measures, as well as to determine the cost- effectiveness of these efforts, because they lacked both monitoring data  and sufficient data on the location of lands at high risk of catastrophic  fires to know the effects of their actions. As a result, their performance  measures created incentives to reduce fuels on all acres, as opposed to  focusing on high-risk acres.
Because of these weaknesses, and because experts said that wildland fire  problems could take decades to resolve, we said that a cohesive, long- term, federal wildland fire management strategy was needed. We said that  this cohesive strategy needed to focus on identifying options for reducing  fuels over the long term in order to decrease future wildland fire risks and  related costs. We also said that the strategy should identify the costs  associated with those different fuel reduction options over time, so that  the Congress could make cost-effective, strategic funding decisions.
section_title: Important Progress Has Been Made in Addressing Federal Wildland Fire Management Problems over the Last 5 Years
paragraphs: The federal government has made important progress over the last 5 years  in improving its management of wildland fire. Nationally it has established  strategic priorities and increased resources for implementing these  priorities. Locally, it has enhanced data and research, planning,  coordination, and collaboration with other parties. With regard to  accountability, it has improved performance measures and established a  monitoring framework.
subsections: section_title: Progress in National Strategy: Priorities Have Been Clarified and Funding Has Been Increased for Identified Needs
paragraphs: Over the last 5 years, the federal government has been formulating a  national strategy known as the National Fire Plan, composed of several  strategic documents that set forth a priority to reduce wildland fire risks to  communities. Similarly, the recently enacted Healthy Forests Restoration  Act of 2003 directs that at least 50 percent of funding for fuel reduction  projects authorized under the act be allocated to wildland-urban interface  areas. While we have raised concerns about the way the agencies have  defined these areas and the specificity of their prioritization guidance, we  believe that the act’s clarification of the community protection priority  provides a good starting point for identifying and prioritizing funding  needs. Similarly, in contrast to fiscal year 1999, when we reported that the  Forest Service had not requested increased funding to meet the growing  fuel reduction needs it had identified, fuel reduction funding for both the  Forest Service and Interior quadrupled by fiscal year 2004. The Congress,  in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, also authorized $760 million per  year to be appropriated for hazardous fuels reduction activities, including  projects for reducing fuels on up to 20 million acres of land. Moreover,  appropriations for both agencies’ overall wildland fire management  activities, including preparedness, suppression and rehabilitation, have  nearly tripled, from about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to over $2.7 billion  in fiscal year 2004.
section_title: Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research, Fire Management Planning, and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been Strengthened
paragraphs: The agencies have strengthened local wildland fire management  implementation by making significant improvements in federal data and  research on wildland fire over the past 5 years, including an initial  mapping of fuel hazards nationwide. Additionally, in 2003, the agencies  approved funding for development of a geospatial data and modeling  system, called LANDFIRE, to map wildland fire hazards with greater  precision and uniformity. LANDFIRE—estimated to cost $40 million and  scheduled for nationwide implementation in 2009––will enable  comparisons of conditions between different field locations nationwide,  thus permitting better identification of the nature and magnitude of  wildland fire risks confronting different community and ecosystem  resources, such as residential and commercial structures, species habitat,  air and water quality, and soils.
The agencies also have improved local fire management planning by  adopting and executing an expedited schedule to complete plans for all  land units that had not been in compliance with agency requirements. The  agencies also adopted a common interagency template for preparing plans  to ensure greater consistency in their contents.
Coordination among federal agencies and their collaboration with  nonfederal partners, critical to effective implementation at the local level,  also has been improved. In 2001, as a result of congressional direction, the  agencies jointly formulated a 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy with the  Western Governors’ Association to involve the states as full partners in  their efforts. An implementation plan adopted by the agencies in 2002  details goals, time lines, and responsibilities of the different parties for a  wide range of activities, including collaboration at the local level to  identify fuel reduction priorities in different areas. Also in 2002, the  agencies established an interagency body, the Wildland Fire Leadership  Council, composed of senior Agriculture and Interior officials and  nonfederal representatives, to improve coordination of their activities with  each other and nonfederal parties.
section_title: Progress in Accountability: Better Performance Measures and a Results Monitoring Framework Have Been Developed
paragraphs: Accountability for the results the federal government achieves from its  investments in wildland fire management activities also has been  strengthened. The agencies have adopted a performance measure that  identifies the amount of acres moved from high-hazard to low-hazard fuel  conditions, replacing a performance measure for fuel reductions that  measured only the total acres of fuel reductions and created an incentive  to treat less costly acres rather than the acres that presented the greatest  hazards. Additionally, in 2004, to have a better baseline for measuring  progress, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council approved a nationwide  framework for monitoring the effects of wildland fire. While an  implementation plan is still needed for this framework, it nonetheless  represents a critical step toward enhancing wildland fire management  accountability.
section_title: Agencies Face Several Challenges to Completing a Long- Needed Cohesive Strategy for Reducing Fuels and Responding to Wildland Fire Problems
paragraphs: While the federal government has made important progress over the past 5  years in addressing wildland fire, a number of challenges still must be met  to complete development of a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies  available long-term options and funding needed to reduce fuels on the  nation’s forests and rangelands. Without such a strategy, the Congress will  not have an informed understanding of when, how, and at what cost  wildland fire problems can be brought under control. None of the strategic  documents adopted by the agencies to date have identified these options  and related funding needs, and the agencies have yet to delineate a plan or  schedule for doing so. To identify these options and funding needs, the  agencies will have to address several challenging tasks related to their  data systems, fire management plans, and assessing the cost-effectiveness  and affordability of different options for reducing fuels.
subsections: section_title: Completing and Implementing the LANDFIRE System Is Essential to Identifying and Addressing Wildland Fire Threats
paragraphs: The agencies face several challenges to completing and implementing  LANDFIRE, so that they can more precisely identify the extent and  location of wildland fire threats and better target fuel reduction efforts.  These challenges include using LANDFIRE to better reconcile the effects  of fuel reduction activities with the agencies’ other stewardship  responsibilities for protecting ecosystem resources, such as air, water,  soils, and species habitat, which fuel reduction efforts can adversely  affect. The agencies also need LANDFIRE to help them better measure and  assess their performance. For example, the data produced by LANDFIRE  will help them devise a separate performance measure for maintaining  conditions on low-hazard lands to ensure that their conditions do not  deteriorate to more hazardous conditions while funding is being focused  on lands with high-hazard conditions.
In implementing LANDFIRE, however, the agencies will have to overcome  the challenges presented by the current lack of a consistent approach to  assessing the risks of wildland fires to ecosystem resources as well as the  lack of an integrated, strategic, and unified approach to managing and  using information systems and data, including those such as LANDFIRE, in  wildland fire decision making. Currently, software, data standards,  equipment, and training vary among the agencies and field units in ways  that hamper needed sharing and consistent application of the data. Also,  LANDFIRE data and models may need to be revised to take into account  recent research findings that suggest part of the increase in wildland fire in  recent years has been caused by a shift in climate patterns. This research  also suggests that these new climate patterns may continue for decades,  resulting in further increases in the amount of wildland fire. Thus, the  nature, extent, and geographical distribution of hazards initially identified  in LANDFIRE, as well as the costs for addressing them, may have to be  reassessed.
section_title: Fire Management Plans Will Need to Be Updated with Latest Data and Research on Wildland Fire
paragraphs: The agencies will need to update their local fire management plans when  more detailed, nationally consistent LANDFIRE data become available.  The plans also will have to be updated to incorporate recent agency fire  research on approaches to more effectively address wildland fire threats.  For example, a 2002 interagency analysis found that protecting wildland- urban interface communities more effectively—as well as more cost- effectively—might require locating a higher proportion of fuel reduction  projects outside of the wildland-urban interface than currently envisioned,  so that fires originating in the wildlands do not become too large to  suppress by the time they arrive at the interface. Moreover, other agency  research suggests that placing fuel reduction treatments in specific  geometric patterns may, for the same cost, provide protection for up to  three times as many community and ecosystem resources as do other  approaches, such as placing fuel breaks around communities and  ecosystems resources. Timely updating of fire management plans with the  latest research findings on optimal design and location of treatments also  will be critical to the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these plans.  The Forest Service indicated that this updating could occur during annual  reviews of fire management plans to determine whether any changes to  them may be needed.
section_title: Ongoing Efforts to Assess the Cost-Effectiveness and Affordability of Fuel Reduction Options Need to Be Completed
paragraphs: Completing the LANDFIRE data and modeling system and updating fire  management plans should enable the agencies to formulate a range of  options for reducing fuels. However, to identify optimal and affordable  choices among these options, the agencies will have to complete certain  cost-effectiveness analysis efforts they currently have under way. These  efforts include an initial 2002 interagency analysis of options and costs for  reducing fuels, congressionally-directed improvements to their budget  allocation systems, and a new strategic analysis framework that considers  affordability.
The Interagency Analysis of Options and Costs: In 2002, a team of Forest  Service and Interior experts produced an estimate of the funds needed to  implement eight different fuel reduction options for protecting  communities and ecosystems across the nation over the next century.  Their analysis also considered the impacts of fuels reduction activities on  future costs for other principal wildland fire management activities, such  as preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation, if fuels were not  reduced. The team concluded that the option that would result in reducing  the risks to communities and ecosystems across the nation could require  an approximate tripling of current fuel reduction funding to about $1.4  billion for an initial period of a few years. These initially higher costs  would decline after fuels had been reduced enough to use less expensive  controlled burning methods in many areas and more fires could be  suppressed at lower cost, with total wildland fire management costs, as  well as risks, being reduced after 15 years. Alternatively, the team said that  not making a substantial short-term investment using a landscape focus  could increase both costs and risks to communities and ecosystems in the  long term. More recently, however, Interior has said that the costs and  time required to reverse current increasing risks may be less when other  vegetation management activities—such as timber harvesting and habitat  improvements—are considered that were not included in the interagency  team’s original assessment but also can influence wildland fire.
The cost of the 2002 interagency team’s option that reduced risks to  communities and ecosystems over the long term is consistent with a June  2002 National Association of State Foresters’ projection of the funding  needed to implement the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy developed by  the agencies and the Western Governors’ Association the previous year.  The state foresters projected a need for steady increases in fuel reduction  funding up to a level of about $1.1 billion by fiscal year 2011. This is  somewhat less than that of the interagency team’s estimate, but still about  2-1/2 times current levels.
The interagency team of experts who prepared the 2002 analysis of  options and associated costs said their estimates of long-term costs could  only be considered an approximation because the data used for their  national-level analysis were not sufficiently detailed. They said a more  accurate estimate of the long-term federal costs and consequences of  different options nationwide would require applying this national analysis  framework in smaller geographic areas using more detailed data, such as  that produced by LANDFIRE, and then aggregating these smaller-scale  results.
The New Budget Allocation System: Agency officials told us that a tool for  applying this interagency analysis at a smaller geographic scale for  aggregation nationally may be another management system under  development—the Fire Program Analysis system. This system, being  developed in response to congressional committee direction to improve  budget allocation tools, is designed to identify the most cost-effective  allocations of annual preparedness funding for implementing agency field  units’ local fire management plans. Eventually, the Fire Program Analysis  system, being initially implemented in 2005, will use LANDFIRE data and  provide a smaller geographical scale for analyses of fuel reduction options  and thus, like LANDFIRE, will be critical for updating fire management  plans. Officials said that this preparedness budget allocation  systemwhen integrated with an additional component now being  considered for allocating annual fuel reduction funding—could be  instrumental in identifying the most cost-effective long-term levels, mixes,  and scheduling of these two wildland fire management activities.  Completely developing the Fire Program Analysis system, including the  fuel reduction funding component, is expected to cost about $40 million  and take until at least 2007 and perhaps until 2009.
The New Strategic Analysis Effort: In May 2004, Agriculture and Interior  began the initial phase of a wildland fire strategic planning effort that also  might contribute to identifying long-term options and needed funding for  reducing fuels and responding to the nation’s wildland fire problems. This  effortthe Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Reviewis intended to result in an  overall federal interagency strategic planning document for wildland fire  management and risk reduction and to provide a blueprint for developing  affordable and integrated fire preparedness, fuels reduction, and fire  suppression programs. Because of this effort’s consideration of  affordability, it may provide a useful framework for developing a cohesive  strategy that includes identifying long-term options and related funding  needs. The preliminary planning, analysis, and internal review phases of  this effort are currently being completed and an initial report is expected  in March 2005.
The improvements in data, modeling, and fire behavior research that the  agencies have under way, together with the new cost-effectiveness focus  of the Fire Program Analysis system to support local fire management  plans, represent important tools that the agencies can begin to use now to  provide the Congress with initial and successively more accurate  assessments of long-term fuel reduction options and related funding  needs. Moreover, a more transparent process of interagency analysis in  framing these options and their costs will permit better identification and  resolution of differing assumptions, approaches, and values. This  transparency provides the best assurance of accuracy and consensus  among differing estimates, such as those of the interagency team and the  National Association of State Foresters.
section_title: A Recent Western Governors’ Association Report Is Consistent with GAO’s Findings and Recommendation
paragraphs: In November 2004, the Western Governors’ Association issued a report  prepared by its Forest Health Advisory Committee that assessed  implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy, which the  association had jointly devised with the agencies in 2001. Although the  association’s report had a different scope than our review, its findings and  recommendations are, nonetheless, generally consistent with ours about  the progress made by the federal government and the challenges it faces  over the next 5 years. In particular, it recommends, as we do, completion  of a long-term federal cohesive strategy for reducing fuels. It also cites the  need for continued efforts to improve, among other things, data on  hazardous fuels, fire management plans, the Fire Program Analysis system,  and cost-effectiveness in fuel reductions––all challenges we have  emphasized today.
section_title: Conclusions
paragraphs: The progress made by the federal government over the last 5 years has  provided a sound foundation for addressing the problems that wildland  fire will increasingly present to communities, ecosystems, and federal  budgetary resources over the next few years and decades. But, as yet,  there is no clear single answer about how best to address these problems  in either the short or long term. Instead, there are different options, each  needing further development to understand the trade-offs among the risks  and funding involved. The Congress needs to understand these options  and tradeoffs in order to make informed policy and appropriations  decisions on this 21st century challenge.
This is the same message we provided to this subcommittee 5 years ago in  calling for a cohesive strategy that identified options and funding needs.  But it still has not been completed. While the agencies are now in a better  position to do so, they must build on the progress made to date by  completing data and modeling efforts underway, updating their fire  management plans with the results of these data efforts and ongoing  research, and following through on recent cost-effectiveness and  affordability initiatives. However, time is running out. Further delay in  completing a strategy that cohesively integrates these activities to identify  options and related funding needs will only result in increased long-term  risks to communities, ecosystems, and federal budgetary resources.
section_title: Recommendation for Executive Action
paragraphs: Because there is an increasingly urgent need for a cohesive federal  strategy that identifies long-term options and related funding needs for  reducing fuels, we have recommended that the Secretaries of Agriculture  and the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of the  agencies’ fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management budgets, with a joint  tactical plan outlining the critical steps the agencies will take, together  with related time frames, to complete such a cohesive strategy.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased  to answer any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee  may have at this time.
section_title: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments
paragraphs: For further information about this testimony, please contact me at (202)  512-3841 or at nazzaror@gao.gov. Jonathan Altshul, David P. Bixler, Barry  T. Hill, Richard Johnson, and Chester Joy made key contributions to this  statement.
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