Wildland Fire Management
Timely Identification of Long-Term Options and Funding Needs Is Critical Gao ID: GAO-05-923T July 14, 2005Wildland fires are increasingly threatening communities and ecosystems. In recent years, these fires have become more intense due to excess vegetation that has accumulated, partly as a result of past management practices. Experts have said that the window of opportunity for effectively responding to wildland fire is rapidly closing. The federal government's cost to manage wildland fires continues to increase. Appropriations for its wildland fire management activities tripled from about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to nearly $3 billion in fiscal year 2005. This testimony discusses the federal government's progress over the past 5 years and future challenges in managing wildland fires. It is based primarily on GAO's report: Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy (GAO-05-147, Jan. 14, 2005).
Over the last 5 years, the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and land management agencies in the Department of the Interior, working with the Congress, have made important progress in responding to wildland fires. Most notably, the agencies have adopted various national strategy documents addressing the need to reduce wildland fire risks, established a priority to protect communities in the wildland-urban interface, and increased efforts and amounts of funding committed to addressing wildland fire problems, including preparedness, suppression, and fuel reduction on federal lands. In addition, the agencies have begun improving their data and research on wildland fire problems, made progress in developing 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. Despite producing numerous planning and strategy documents, the agencies have yet to develop a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the long-term options and related funding needed to reduce the excess vegetation that fuels fires in national forests and rangelands. Reducing these fuels lowers risks to communities and ecosystems and helps contain suppression costs. As GAO noted in 1999, such a strategy would help the agencies and the Congress to determine the most effective and affordable long-term approach for addressing wildland fire problems. Completing this strategy will require finishing several efforts now under way, each with its own challenges. The agencies will need to finish planned improvements in a key data and modeling system--LANDFIRE--to more precisely identify the extent and location of wildland fire threats and to better target fuel reduction efforts. In implementing LANDFIRE, the agencies will need more consistent approaches to assessing wildland fire risks, more integrated information systems, and better understanding of the role of climate in wildland fire. In addition, local fire management plans will need to be updated with data from LANDFIRE and from emerging agency research on more cost-effective approaches to reducing fuels. Completing a new system designed to identify the most cost-effective means for allocating fire management budget resources--Fire Program Analysis--may help to better identify long-term options and related funding needs. Without completing these tasks, the agencies will have difficulty determining the extent and location of wildland fire threats, targeting and coordinating their efforts and resources, and resolving wildland fire problems in the most timely and cost-effective manner over the long term.
GAO-05-923T, Wildland Fire Management: Timely Identification of Long-Term Options and Funding Needs Is Critical
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Testimony:
Before the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies,
Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
For Release on Delivery Expected at 10:00 a.m. EDT:
Thursday, July 14, 2005:
Wildland Fire Management:
Timely Identification of Long-Term Options and Funding Needs Is
Critical:
Statement of Robert A. Robinson, Managing Director, Natural Resources
and Environment:
GAO-05-923T:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-05-923T, a testimony before the Subcommittee on
Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, Committee on
Appropriations, House of Representatives:
Why GAO Did This Study:
Wildland fires are increasingly threatening communities and ecosystems.
In recent years, these fires have become more intense due to excess
vegetation that has accumulated, partly as a result of past management
practices. Experts have said that the window of opportunity for
effectively responding to wildland fire is rapidly closing.
The federal government‘s cost to manage wildland fires continues to
increase. Appropriations for its wildland fire management activities
tripled from about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to nearly $3 billion
in fiscal year 2005.
This testimony discusses the federal government‘s progress over the
past 5 years and future challenges in managing wildland fires. It is
based primarily on GAO‘s report: Wildland Fire Management: Important
Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive
Strategy (GAO-05-147, Jan. 14, 2005).
What GAO Found:
Over the last 5 years, the Forest Service in the Department of
Agriculture and land management agencies in the Department of the
Interior, working with the Congress, have made important progress in
responding to wildland fires. Most notably, the agencies have adopted
various national strategy documents addressing the need to reduce
wildland fire risks, established a priority to protect communities in
the wildland-urban interface, and increased efforts and amounts of
funding committed to addressing wildland fire problems, including
preparedness, suppression, and fuel reduction on federal lands. In
addition, the agencies have begun improving their data and research on
wildland fire problems, made progress in developing 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.
Despite producing numerous planning and strategy documents, the
agencies have yet to develop a cohesive strategy that explicitly
identifies the long-term options and related funding needed to reduce
the excess vegetation that fuels fires in national forests and
rangelands. Reducing these fuels lowers risks to communities and
ecosystems and helps contain suppression costs. As GAO noted in 1999,
such a strategy would help the agencies and the Congress to determine
the most effective and affordable long-term approach for addressing
wildland fire problems. Completing this strategy will require finishing
several efforts now under way, each with its own challenges. The
agencies will need to finish planned improvements in a key data and
modeling system”LANDFIRE”to more precisely identify the extent and
location of wildland fire threats and to better target fuel reduction
efforts. In implementing LANDFIRE, the agencies will need more
consistent approaches to assessing wildland fire risks, more integrated
information systems, and better understanding of the role of climate in
wildland fire. In addition, local fire management plans will need to be
updated with data from LANDFIRE and from emerging agency research on
more cost-effective approaches to reducing fuels. Completing a new
system designed to identify the most cost-effective means for
allocating fire management budget resources”Fire Program Analysis”may
help to better identify long-term options and related funding needs.
Without completing these tasks, the agencies will have difficulty
determining the extent and location of wildland fire threats, targeting
and coordinating their efforts and resources, and resolving wildland
fire problems in the most timely and cost-effective manner over the
long term.
What GAO Recommends:
In its report, GAO recommended that the Secretaries of Agriculture and
of the Interior develop a plan for completing a cohesive strategy that
identifies options and funding needed to address wildland fire
problems. The agencies agreed with GAO‘s recommendation and expect to
develop such a plan by August 2005.
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-923T.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Robert A. Robinson at
(202) 512-3841 or robinsonr@gao.gov, or Robin M. Nazzaro at (202) 512-
3841 or nazzaror@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the status of the federal
government's efforts to address our nation's wildland fire problems.
Wildland fire is a natural process that plays an important role in the
health of many fire-adapted ecosystems, but it also can cause
catastrophic damage to communities and ecosystems. The trend of
increasing wildland fire threats to communities and ecosystems that we
reported on 5 years ago has continued.[Footnote 1] The average acreage
of lands burned by wildland fires annually from 2000 through 2004 was
about 62 percent greater than the average amount burned annually during
the 1990s. Experts have noted that catastrophic damage from wildland
fires probably will continue to increase until an adequate long-term
federal response is implemented. They stated that efforts to resolve
the growing threats of catastrophic wildland fires are in a race
against time and the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
My testimony today summarizes the findings of our January 2005 report,
which discusses the progress the federal government has made over the
last 5 years and key challenges it faces in developing and implementing
a long-term response to wildland fire problems.[Footnote 2] This report
is based primarily on over 25 reviews we conducted in recent years of
federal wildland fire management that focused largely on the activities
of the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and the land
management agencies in the Department of the Interior, which together
manage about 95 percent of all federal lands.
Summary:
In the past 5 years, the federal government has made important progress
in putting into place the basic components of a framework for managing
and responding to the nation's wildland fire problems, including:
* establishing a priority to protect communities near wildlands--called
the wildland-urban interface;
* increasing the amount of effort and funds available for addressing
fire-related concerns, such as fuel reduction on federal lands;
* improving data and research on wildland fire, local fire management
plans, interagency coordination, and collaboration with nonfederal
partners; and:
* refining performance measures and results monitoring for wildland
fire management.
While this progress has been important, many challenges remain for
addressing wildland fire problems in a timely and effective manner.
Most notably, the land management agencies need to complete a cohesive
strategy that identifies the long-term options and related funding
needed for reducing fuels and responding to wildland fires when they
occur. A recent Western Governors' Association report also called for
completing such a cohesive federal strategy. The agencies and the
Congress need such a strategy to make decisions about an effective and
affordable long-term approach for addressing problems that have been
decades in the making and will take decades more to resolve. However,
completing and implementing such a strategy will require that the
agencies complete several challenging tasks, including:
* developing data systems needed to identify the extent, severity, and
location of wildland fire threats to the nation's communities and
ecosystems;
* updating local fire management plans to better specify the actions
needed to effectively address these threats; and:
* assessing the cost-effectiveness and affordability of options for
reducing fuels.
In our January 2005 report, we recommended that the Secretaries of
Agriculture and of the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its
consideration of the agencies' fiscal year 2006 wildland fire
management budgets, with a joint tactical plan outlining the critical
steps the agencies will take, together with related time frames, to
complete a cohesive strategy that identifies long-term options and
needed funding for reducing and maintaining fuels at acceptable levels
and responding to the nation's wildland fire problems. The departments
of Agriculture and the Interior have said that they will produce such a
plan by August 2005. In these times of limited resources, we believe it
is critical that the agencies develop and implement this plan in a
timely fashion so that they and the Congress, especially this
Subcommittee, have the best information available to make informed
decisions in addressing the nation's wildland fire problems.
Background:
Wildland fire triggered by lightning is a normal, inevitable, and
necessary ecological process that nature uses to periodically remove
excess undergrowth, small trees, and vegetation to renew ecosystem
productivity. However, various human land use and management practices,
including several decades of fire suppression activities, have reduced
the normal frequency of wildland fires in many forest and rangeland
ecosystems and have resulted in abnormally dense and continuous
accumulations of vegetation that can fuel uncharacteristically large
and intense wildland fires. Such large intense fires increasingly
threaten catastrophic ecosystem damage and also increasingly threaten
human lives, health, property, and infrastructure in the wildland-urban
interface. Federal researchers estimate that vegetative conditions that
can fuel such fires exist on approximately 190 million acres--or more
than 40 percent--of federal lands in the contiguous United States but
could vary from 90 million to 200 million acres, and that these
conditions also exist on many nonfederal lands.
Our reviews over the last 5 years identified several weaknesses in the
federal government's management response to wildland fire issues. These
weaknesses included the lack of a national strategy that addressed the
likely high costs of needed fuel reduction efforts and the need to
prioritize these efforts. Our reviews also found shortcomings in
federal implementation at the local level, where over half of all
federal land management units' fire management plans did not meet
agency requirements designed to restore fire's natural role in
ecosystems consistent with human health and safety. These plans are
intended to provide program direction for fuel reduction, preparedness,
suppression, and rehabilitation actions. The agencies also lacked basic
data, such as the amount and location of lands needing fuel reduction,
and research on the effectiveness of different fuel reduction methods
on which to base their fire management plans and specific project
decisions. Furthermore, coordination among federal agencies and
collaboration between these agencies and nonfederal entities were
ineffective. This kind of cooperation is needed because wildland fire
is a shared problem that transcends land ownership and administrative
boundaries. Finally, we found that better accountability for federal
expenditures and performance in wildland fire management was needed.
Agencies were unable to assess the extent to which they were reducing
wildland fire risks or to establish meaningful fuel reduction
performance measures, as well as to determine the 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.[Footnote 3] We said that this cohesive strategy needed to focus
on identifying options for reducing fuels over the long term in order
to decrease future wildland fire risks and related costs. We also said
that the strategy should identify the costs associated with those
different fuel reduction options over time, so that the Congress could
make cost-effective, strategic funding decisions.
Important Progress Has Been Made in Addressing Federal Wildland Fire
Management Problems over the Last 5 Years:
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.
Progress in National Strategy: Priorities Have Been Clarified and
Funding Has Been Increased for Identified Needs:
Over the last 5 years, the federal government has been formulating a
national strategy known as the National Fire Plan, composed of several
strategic documents that set forth a priority to reduce wildland fire
risks to communities. Similarly, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of
2003 directs that at least 50 percent of funding for fuel reduction
projects authorized under the act be allocated to wildland-urban
interface areas. While we have raised concerns about the way the
agencies have defined these areas and the specificity of their
prioritization guidance, we believe that the act's clarification of the
community protection priority provides a good starting point for
identifying and prioritizing funding needs. Similarly, in contrast to
fiscal year 1999, when we reported that the Forest Service had not
requested increased funding to meet the growing fuel reduction needs it
had identified, fuel reduction funding for both the Forest Service and
Interior more than quadrupled by fiscal year 2005. The Congress, in the
Healthy Forests Restoration Act, also authorized $760 million per year
to be appropriated for hazardous fuels reduction activities, including
projects for reducing fuels on up to 20 million acres of land.
Moreover, appropriations for both agencies' overall wildland fire
management activities, including preparedness, fuel reduction, and
suppression, tripled from about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to
nearly $3 billion in fiscal year 2005.
Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research, Fire Management
Planning, and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been Strengthened:
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.
Progress in Accountability: Better Performance Measures and a Results
Monitoring Framework Have Been Developed:
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.
Agencies Face Several Challenges to Completing a Long-Needed Cohesive
Strategy for Reducing Fuels and Responding to Wildland Fire Problems:
While the federal government has made important progress over the past
5 years in addressing wildland fire, a number of challenges still must
be met to complete development of a cohesive strategy that explicitly
identifies available long-term options and funding needed to reduce
fuels on the nation's forests and rangelands. Without such a strategy,
the Congress will not have an informed understanding of when, how, and
at what cost wildland fire problems can be brought under control. None
of the strategic documents adopted by the agencies to date have
identified these options and related funding needs, and the agencies
have yet to delineate a plan or schedule for doing so. To identify
these options and funding needs, the agencies will have to address
several challenging tasks related to their data systems, fire
management plans, and the assessment of the cost-effectiveness and
affordability of different options for reducing fuels.
Completing and Implementing the LANDFIRE System Is Essential to
Identifying and Addressing Wildland Fire Threats:
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.
Fire Management Plans Will Need to Be Updated with Latest Data and
Research on Wildland Fire:
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.
Ongoing Efforts to Assess the Cost-Effectiveness and Affordability of
Fuel Reduction Options Need to Be Completed:
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 systemæwhen 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 effortæthe Quadrennial Fire and Fuels
Reviewæis 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 have been completed and an initial report is expected in July
2005.
The improvements in data, modeling, and fire behavior research that the
agencies have under way, together with the new cost-effectiveness focus
of the Fire Program Analysis system to support local fire management
plans, represent important tools that the agencies can begin to use now
to provide the Congress with initial and successively more accurate
assessments of long-term fuel reduction options and related funding
needs. Moreover, a more transparent process of interagency analysis in
framing these options and their costs will permit better identification
and resolution of differing assumptions, approaches, and values. This
transparency provides the best assurance of accuracy and consensus
among differing estimates, such as those of the interagency team and
the National Association of State Foresters.
A Recent Western Governors' Association Report Is Consistent with GAO's
Findings and Recommendation:
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.[Footnote 4]
Although the association's report had a different scope than our
review, its findings and recommendations are, nonetheless, generally
consistent with ours about the progress made by the federal government
and the challenges it faces over the next 5 years. In particular, it
recommends, as we do, completion of a long-term, federal, cohesive
strategy for reducing fuels. It also cites the need for continued
efforts to improve, among other things, data on hazardous fuels, fire
management plans, the Fire Program Analysis system, and cost-
effectiveness in fuel reductions--all challenges we have emphasized
today.
Conclusions:
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the progress made by the federal
government over the last 5 years has provided a sound foundation for
addressing the problems that wildland fire will increasingly present to
communities, ecosystems, and federal budgetary resources over the next
few years and decades. As yet, however, there is no clear single answer
about how best to address these problems in either the short or long
term. Instead, there are different options, each needing further
development to understand the trade-offs among the risks and funding
involved. The Congress needs to understand these options and trade-offs
in order to make informed policy and appropriations decisions on this
21st century challenge.
This is the same message we provided in 1999 when we first called for
development of a cohesive strategy identifying options and funding
needs. But it has not been completed. While the agencies are now in a
better position to do so, they must build on the progress made to date
by completing data and modeling efforts underway, updating their fire
management plans with the results of these data efforts and ongoing
research, and following through on recent cost-effectiveness and
affordability initiatives. However, time is running out. Further delay
in completing a strategy that cohesively integrates these activities to
identify options and related funding needs will only result in
increased long-term risks to communities, ecosystems, and federal
budgetary resources.
Because there is an increasingly urgent need for a cohesive federal
strategy that identifies long-term options and related funding needs
for reducing fuels, we recommended that the Secretaries of Agriculture
and of the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its consideration
of the agencies' fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management budgets,
with a joint tactical plan outlining the critical steps the agencies
will take, together with related time frames, to complete such a
cohesive strategy.
In an April 2005 letter, Agriculture and Interior said that they will
produce by August 2005, for the Wildland Fire Leadership Council's
review and approval, a joint tactical plan that will identify the steps
and time frames for completing a cohesive strategy. We look forward to
the agencies completing this important step. However, as noted at the
outset of this testimony, the window of opportunity for effectively
addressing wildland fire is rapidly closing. Thus, developing a
cohesive strategy should not wait until 2009, when LANDFIRE and the
Fire Program Analysis are fully developed. As we have noted, the 2002
interagency analysis of long-term options and costs is a good starting
point that can serve as a basis for providing the Congress with interim
updates on options and funding needs to respond to wildland fires.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased
to answer any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee
may have at this time.
GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
For further information on this testimony, please contact Robert A.
Robinson at (202) 512-3841 or robinsonr@gao.gov, or Robin M. Nazzaro at
(202) 512-3841or nazzaror@gao.gov. Individuals making key contributions
to this testimony included David P. Bixler, Janet Frisch, Richard
Johnson, and Chester Joy.
FOOTNOTES
[1] GAO, Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy Is Needed to
Address Catastrophic Wildfire Threats, GAO/RCED-99-65 (Washington,
D.C.: Apr. 2, 1999)
[2] GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made,
but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy, GAO-05-147
(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005).
[3] GAO/RCED-99-65.
[4] Report to the Western Governors on the Implementation of the 10-
Year Comprehensive Strategy, Western Governors' Association Forest
Health Advisory Committee (Denver, Colo.: 2004).
