Western National Forests

The most extensive and serious problem confronting the health of national forests in the interior West is the overaccumulation of vegetation, which has caused an increasing number of catastrophic wildfires. Nearly 40 million acres of national forests in the interior West are at high risk of devastating wildfires, according to the Forest Service. Past management practices, especially the Forest Service's decades-old policy of putting out wildfires in the national forests, disrupted the natural cycle of low-intensity fires, which periodically cleared out undergrowth without damaging larger trees. Today, the accumulation of vegetation has transformed much of the region into a tinderbox. The number of large wildfires and the acres burned by them has risen during the past decade, as have the costs of efforts to put them out. In 1997, the Forest Service announced that it planned to resolve the problem of uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires in national forests by the end of fiscal year 2015. To meet this goal, it has (1) launched a program to monitor forest health, (2) refocused its wildland fire management program to increase the number of acres on which it reduces accumulated vegetation, and (3) restructured its budget to better ensure that funds are available to reduce these fuels. Because of a lack of adequate data, however, the Forest Service has yet to develop a cohesive strategy for overcoming several significant barriers to improving the health of the national forests by reducing fuels. For example, mechanical methods, including commercial timber harvesting, will often be necessary to remove accumulated fuels. However, such methods are problematic because the Forest Service's initiatives tend to focus on areas that may not present the highest fire hazards and because 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 each year. But the problem is so extensive that even this level of effort may not be enough to prevent catastrophic fires during the coming decades.

GAO noted that: (1) 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; (2) according to the Forest Service, 39 million acres in national forests in the interior West are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire; (3) past management practices, especially the Forest Service's decades-old policy of putting out wildfires in the national forests, disrupted the historical occurrence of frequent low-intensity fires, which had periodically removed flammable undergrowth without significantly damaging larger trees; (4) 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; (5) 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; (6) 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; (7) during the 1990s, the Forest Service began to address the unintended consequences of its policy of putting out wildfires; (8) in 1997, it announced its goal to improve forest health by resolving the problems of uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires in national forests by the end of fiscal year 2015; (9) to accomplish this goal, it has: (a) initiated a program to monitor forest health; (b) refocused its wildland fire management program to increase the number of acres on which it reduces the accumulated vegetation that forms excessive fuels; and (c) restructured its budget to better ensure that funds are available for reducing these fuels; (10) Congress has supported the Forest Service's efforts by increasing the funds for reducing fuels and authorizing a multiyear program to better assess problems and solutions; (11) 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; and (12) many acres of national forests in the interior West may remain at high risk of uncontrollable wildfire at the end of fiscal year 2015.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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