Wildland Fire Rehabilitation and Restoration
Forest Service and BLM Could Benefit from Improved Information on Status of Needed Work Gao ID: GAO-06-670 June 30, 2006Since 2001, Congress and federal agencies, including the Forest Service and Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), have recognized the importance of rehabilitating and restoring lands unlikely to recover on their own after wildland fires. However, while funding has increased for fire prevention, suppression, and first-year emergency stabilization, it has decreased for rehabilitation (work up to 3 years after fires) and restoration (work beyond the first 3 years). GAO was asked (1) how the Forest Service and BLM plan postfire rehabilitation and restoration projects, (2) how much needed rehabilitation and restoration work they have completed for recent wildland fires, and (3) what challenges the agencies face in addressing their needs.
The Forest Service and BLM use similar procedures to identify rehabilitation and restoration needs, but differ in how they plan and fund related projects. Given the variety of ecosystems they manage, Forest Service field staff have the discretion to locally prioritize projects, and the agency addresses them through various programs with appropriations from multiple accounts. In contrast, BLM has a standard process for planning needed rehabilitation projects and, through a single account, funds projects for up to 3 years after fires. For restoration projects--that is, work needed beyond 3 years after a fire--BLM requires them to be addressed through other programs such as rangeland management. With available information, it is not possible to reliably determine how much needed rehabilitation and restoration work has been completed for recent Forest Service and BLM fires. The Forest Service does not know how much work has been completed because it does not collect nationwide data. BLM reported that, according to its data, it has completed most of its rehabilitation work, but the agency does not collect data on postfire restoration work, which is done through other programs. GAO surveyed Forest Service and BLM officials to determine how much needed work has been completed, but the information provided in the survey was not sufficiently reliable to report. Forest Service and BLM officials face different challenges to addressing their rehabilitation and restoration needs. Forest Service officials cited factors such as competing priorities within constrained budgets and controversy over certain activities. Agency officials said that controversy over harvesting burned timber can be exacerbated by the limited scientific research available to guide such decisions. BLM officials cited challenges to achieving long-term success when seeding burned areas. The agency is taking several steps to improve success rates.
RecommendationsOur 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.
Director: Team: Phone:GAO-06-670, Wildland Fire Rehabilitation and Restoration: Forest Service and BLM Could Benefit from Improved Information on Status of Needed Work
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Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health,
Committee on Resources, House of Representatives:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
June 2006:
Wildland Fire Rehabilitation And Restoration:
Forest Service and BLM Could Benefit from Improved Information on
Status of Needed Work:
Wildland Fire Rehabilitation and Restoration:
GAO-06-670:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-06-670, a report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on
Forests and Forest Health, Committee on Resources, House of
Representatives
Why GAO Did This Study:
Since 2001, Congress and federal agencies, including the Forest Service
and Department of the Interior‘s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), have
recognized the importance of rehabilitating and restoring lands
unlikely to recover on their own after wildland fires. However, while
funding has increased for fire prevention, suppression, and first-year
emergency stabilization, it has decreased for rehabilitation (work up
to 3 years after fires) and restoration (work beyond the first 3
years). GAO was asked (1) how the Forest Service and BLM plan postfire
rehabilitation and restoration projects, (2) how much needed
rehabilitation and restoration work they have completed for recent
wildland fires, and (3) what challenges the agencies face in addressing
their needs.
What GAO Found:
The Forest Service and BLM use similar procedures to identify
rehabilitation and restoration needs, but differ in how they plan and
fund related projects. Given the variety of ecosystems they manage,
Forest Service field staff have the discretion to locally prioritize
projects, and the agency addresses them through various programs with
appropriations from multiple accounts. In contrast, BLM has a standard
process for planning needed rehabilitation projects and, through a
single account, funds projects for up to 3 years after fires. For
restoration projects”that is, work needed beyond 3 years after a
fire”BLM requires them to be addressed through other programs such as
rangeland management.
With available information, it is not possible to reliably determine
how much needed rehabilitation and restoration work has been completed
for recent Forest Service and BLM fires. The Forest Service does not
know how much work has been completed because it does not collect
nationwide data. BLM reported that, according to its data, it has
completed most of its rehabilitation work, but the agency does not
collect data on postfire restoration work, which is done through other
programs. GAO surveyed Forest Service and BLM officials to determine
how much needed work has been completed, but the information provided
in the survey was not sufficiently reliable to report.
Forest Service and BLM officials face different challenges to
addressing their rehabilitation and restoration needs. Forest Service
officials cited factors such as competing priorities within constrained
budgets and controversy over certain activities. Agency officials said
that controversy over harvesting burned timber can be exacerbated by
the limited scientific research available to guide such decisions. BLM
officials cited challenges to achieving long-term success when seeding
burned areas. The agency is taking several steps to improve success
rates.
Figure: Forest Service Building Partly Buried by Postfire Flood Debris
(left) and Restored Later:
[See PDF for Image]
Source: Forest Service.
[End of Figure]
What GAO Recommends:
GAO is recommending that the Forest Service and BLM improve their
information on whether postfire rehabilitation and restoration needs
are met, and that the Forest Service augment research to help guide
decisions.
In commenting on a draft of this report, the Forest Service and
Interior generally agreed with GAO‘s findings and recommendations.
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-670].
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Robin M. Nazzaro at (202)
512-3841 or nazzaror@gao.gov.
[End of Section]
Contents:
Letter:
Results in Brief:
Background:
Forest Service and BLM Differ in How They Plan Needed Rehabilitation
and Restoration Work:
Forest Service Lacks Data on Rehabilitation and Restoration Work; BLM
Lacks Data on Restoration Work:
Forest Service and BLM Officials Cite Different Challenges to
Rehabilitating and Restoring Their Lands:
Conclusions:
Recommendations for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of the Interior:
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
Table:
Table 1: Verification Results for Survey Responses about Project
Completion and Funding:
Figures:
Figure 1: Postfire Flood Damage at Sabino Canyon Recreation Site,
Coronado National Forest, Arizona:
Figure 2: Completed Rehabilitation of Sabino Canyon Recreation Site,
Coronado National Forest, Arizona:
Figure 3: A Helicopter Prepares to Aerially Seed a Burned Area after a
2005 BLM Fire:
Abbreviations:
BLM: Bureau of Land Management:
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
June 30, 2006:
The Honorable Greg Walden:
Chairman:
Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health Committee on Resources:
House of Representatives:
Dear Mr. Chairman:
In the past 5 years, wildland fires have burned millions of acres of
federal land, breaking records in size, costing billions of dollars to
suppress, and drawing greater attention to the risks associated with
wildland fires. Many fires occur naturally, and some ecosystems are
adapted to fires, relying on them to maintain their health. However,
wildland fires can sometimes leave behind a burned landscape that
threatens human safety, property, and ecosystems. In areas of steep
terrain, postfire rainstorms can cause mudslides that bury homes,
destroy roads, and clog streams. Wildland fires also can create
postfire environments that are ideal for the growth of noxious or
invasive weeds. If these weeds replace native plant species, threatened
or endangered wildlife species can lose their habitat. When fires
result in such adverse effects, land managers may conduct emergency
stabilization, rehabilitation, and restoration activities to mitigate
the effects and to prevent further damage. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Forest Service and the Department of the Interior's land
management agencies are responsible for such activities on federal
land.[Footnote 1] Combined, the Forest Service and Interior manage
about 630 million acres, or 94 percent, of the nation's federal land,
including forests, rangelands, and other lands.
In 2001, in response to one of the worst fire seasons in over 50 years,
the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior, in collaboration with
state governors, adopted a 10-year strategy to address federal, state,
local, and tribal management of wildland fires.[Footnote 2] One of the
four goals adopted in the strategy was to restore fire-adapted
ecosystems through rehabilitation and restoration efforts, combined
with scientific research and monitoring. In support of this goal,
Congress began providing funds in fiscal year 2001 to the Forest
Service and Interior specifically for postfire rehabilitation and
restoration.
In 2003, as a step toward coordinating their approaches to postfire
management, the Forest Service and Interior adopted the following
common definitions for emergency stabilization, rehabilitation, and
restoration:
* Emergency stabilization activities are conducted within 1 year of a
fire to address threats to life, property, or resources. Such
activities may include seeding and mulching to prevent soil erosion.
* Rehabilitation activities, conducted within 3 years of a fire,
address damage to minor facilities such as picnic facilities, or to
lands unlikely to recover to a desired condition on their own. Such
activities may include repairing roads or trails, planting trees, and
restoring wildlife habitat.
* Restoration activities are a continuation of rehabilitation
activities beyond the initial 3 years, or the repair or replacement of
major facilities, such as a visitor center.
Although the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)--
the agency that manages the most land within Interior--are both
responsible for managing postfire work on federal lands, the task is
different for the two agencies. The Forest Service conducts emergency
stabilization, rehabilitation, and restoration activities under
multiple programs such as its watershed improvement and reforestation
programs, while BLM conducts emergency stabilization and rehabilitation
activities under distinct postfire programs that do not address
restoration needs. Forest Service land encompasses a wide variety of
ecosystems--ecological communities such as old-growth forests, alpine
meadows, and marsh wetlands--and watersheds that provide drinking water
and timber, while most of BLM's land consists of rangeland (although
BLM also manages about 55 million acres of forests and woodlands).
These land characteristics influence the agencies' work. For example,
the Forest Service's rehabilitation and restoration activities commonly
include reforestation, road work, trail work, and weed control, but
also can include activities ranging from surveying boundaries to
securing archaeological sites. On the other hand, BLM's rehabilitation
activities include primarily weed control, grass and shrub seeding, and
fence repair or replacement.
Since 2001, Congress and the agencies have taken actions that recognize
the importance of rehabilitation and restoration activities, including
directing funds toward these activities and developing strategy
documents. However, while resources for fire prevention, suppression,
and emergency stabilization have increased, fewer resources have been
focused on the long-term rehabilitation and restoration of lands burned
by fires. Between fiscal year 2001 and 2005, annual appropriations to
the Forest Service and Interior for fire prevention, suppression, and
emergency stabilization increased by about 26 percent (15 percent
adjusted for inflation), but rehabilitation and restoration
appropriations (directed in law or committee reports) declined steeply,
from $246 million in fiscal year 2001 to $37 million in fiscal year
2005--a decrease of about 85 percent (86 percent adjusted for
inflation).[Footnote 3] In this context, you asked us to determine (1)
how the Forest Service and BLM identify and plan postfire
rehabilitation and restoration activities; (2) how much needed
rehabilitation and restoration work the agencies have completed for
wildland fires that occurred between 2000 and 2004; and (3) what
challenges the agencies face in addressing their postfire needs, and
any actions they are taking in response.
In conducting our work, we met with Forest Service and BLM officials;
reviewed agency documents about postfire rehabilitation and restoration
programs, projects, and funding procedures; and discussed challenges
the agencies face in addressing needed rehabilitation and restoration
work. We visited seven forests and three BLM units in western states,
where rehabilitation and restoration efforts are concentrated, to
interview agency officials and observe postfire conditions and
rehabilitation and restoration projects. We also administered a Web-
based survey to agency officials for 276 randomly sampled fires that
occurred between 2000 and 2004 and burned over 500 acres each. For each
of the fires in our sample, we surveyed agency officials in the field
about any needed rehabilitation and restoration projects they
identified, whether the projects were completed, factors preventing
their completion, and any effects of not completing needed projects.
However, when we collected source documents to validate responses for
10 percent of the completed surveys, we found that the data provided
were not sufficiently reliable to report. A more detailed description
of our scope and methodology is presented in appendix I. We performed
our work from May 2005 through May 2006 in accordance with generally
accepted government auditing standards.
Results in Brief:
In the aftermath of wildland fires, the Forest Service and BLM use
similar procedures to identify rehabilitation and restoration needs,
but differ in how they plan, prioritize, and fund needed work. To
determine what rehabilitation or restoration projects, if any, are
necessary after a wildland fire, both the Forest Service and BLM first
assess the condition of the burned area and compare it with prefire and
desired conditions. In many cases, the condition of the land is
satisfactory--for example, because the fire did not burn severely--and
no rehabilitation or restoration is needed. For fires that need
rehabilitation or restoration, the Forest Service and BLM differ in how
they plan, prioritize, and fund projects. The Forest Service has no
national requirements for its rehabilitation and restoration
activities; instead, it gives its regions and forests the discretion to
develop procedures independently, so they can tailor them to their
particular ecosystems and priorities. For example, some regions place a
higher priority on infrastructure projects, such as repairing roads,
trails, and recreation facilities, while others prioritize projects to
help ecosystems recover, such as replanting burned areas. The Forest
Service pays for its rehabilitation and restoration projects using
funds from several different appropriations, including appropriations
specifically designated for such activities under the wildland fire
management account; appropriations from the national forest system
account, which are available for recreation and vegetation management,
for example; and appropriations from the capital improvement and
maintenance account, which are available for road and facility
construction or repair, among other things. According to Forest Service
officials, relying on these other program funds allows regions and
forests greater flexibility to determine their priorities across many
program areas and to accommodate needs that arise after other
unpredictable events, such as hurricanes. BLM, on the other hand, uses
a standardized process to plan, prioritize, and fund its rehabilitation
work. BLM field staff develop 3-year rehabilitation plans, its state
and headquarters officials review and approve the plans, and
headquarters officials allocate the available funding. Unlike the
Forest Service, BLM pays for nearly all of its rehabilitation work with
appropriations from a single source--its wildland fire management
account--and requires the work to be complete within 3 years after a
fire. BLM requires any subsequent restoration work to be addressed
through other programs, such as range improvement and noxious weeds.
Using available information, neither the agencies nor we could reliably
determine how much needed rehabilitation and restoration work has been
completed for Forest Service and BLM fires that occurred between 2000
and 2004. The Forest Service does not maintain comprehensive data on
rehabilitation and restoration work, and thus could not determine how
much rehabilitation and restoration work has been completed nationwide.
In our visits to several national forests, agency officials reported
completing all needed rehabilitation and restoration work for some
fires, and little or no needed work for other fires, but without
nationwide data, it is unclear how widespread either of these
situations is. Also, while BLM maintains data on its rehabilitation
work, the agency does not maintain data on its postfire restoration
work, which is completed through other programs. BLM officials told us
that, according to their data, most rehabilitation work needed through
fiscal year 2005 has been completed. However, we could not
independently validate all of BLM's rehabilitation data because these
data are commingled with the agency's emergency stabilization data for
fires before 2004. We administered a survey to officials from both
agencies to obtain this information, but determined that the data
provided in the survey was not reliable. Specifically, we requested
source documents from a sample of respondents to validate the survey
data, but a significant portion of the documents we received did not
substantiate the survey responses. Without comprehensive data on needed
and completed rehabilitation and restoration work, Forest Service and
BLM officials make management decisions, including requesting and
allocating funding, without knowing to what extent they are addressing
the needs on their lands.
Forest Service and BLM officials said they face different challenges in
their efforts to address postfire rehabilitation and restoration needs,
in part reflecting their different management approaches, ecosystems,
and postfire activities. Forest Service field officials reported that a
lack of dedicated funds, insufficient workforce, and other factors
prevented many needed projects from being completed. In addition,
officials told us the method the agency used to allocate annual
rehabilitation and restoration funding to regions meant that available
funds fluctuated dramatically from year to year, making it difficult to
manage the program. Forest Service officials said they have tried to
stabilize the erratic funding levels by changing how they allocate
these funds to regions in fiscal year 2006, but have not asked for
additional rehabilitation and restoration funding because of other
competing program priorities and budget constraints. Forest Service
field officials also noted that controversy about postfire activities,
such as using chemical herbicides and harvesting burned timber,
presented challenges. Disagreements about whether such actions would
result in beneficial or harmful effects compared with doing nothing
sometimes delayed projects, they said. Several Forest Service officials
expressed concern that in some cases there is insufficient scientific
evidence to support one action over another, and further noted that
little research has been done to address this shortage. Consequently,
officials rely on a limited number of studies when making decisions in
these cases, which may at times exacerbate the existing controversy.
For BLM, headquarters and field officials told us that while they
believe they have completed most of their projects, they face
challenges in achieving long-term success with some of their completed
projects. According to agency officials, many of BLM's seeding and
planting projects fail or are only partially successful because there
is not enough rain for seeds to grow, or because officials, relying on
limited information, use planting techniques that prevent seeds from
germinating. To address this issue, BLM officials said they are now
monitoring rehabilitation projects more consistently to learn why
projects are effective or not, and have begun developing standard
monitoring protocols and a Web-based information-sharing network that
will allow staff to share lessons learned.
To ensure that agency and congressional decision makers know if high-
priority needs are being met, and to help them make informed funding
and other decisions, we are recommending that (1) the Secretary of
Agriculture direct the Forest Service to track and report to Congress
the extent to which it is addressing its high-priority rehabilitation
and restoration work, and (2) the Secretary of the Interior direct BLM
to establish a procedure to address any postfire restoration work
needed after 3 years, and to track and report to Congress the status of
such work. We also are recommending that the Secretary of Agriculture
direct the Forest Service to conduct additional research on the effects
of postfire projects to provide agency officials with more scientific
evidence to better support their decisions, especially about
controversial actions. In commenting on a draft of this report, the
Forest Service and Interior generally agreed with our findings and
recommendations.
Background:
Although wildland fires are inevitable natural disturbances that have
helped shape ecosystems over time, they can be unpredictable and
destructive as well. Fires can kill trees and other vegetation, alter
wildlife habitat and soils, and destroy roads, buildings, campgrounds
and other infrastructure. Fires can also leave lands denuded of
vegetation and vulnerable to severe erosion and mudslides, which can
contaminate municipal water supplies and compromise water quality in
streams and lakes. In addition, the open landscapes left by fires can
create opportunities for invasive plants to become established or
expand, crowding out native plants and the animals that depend on them.
When wildland fires have adverse effects on natural resources, and
federal land managers believe the lands are unlikely to recover to a
desired condition on their own, they may conduct rehabilitation or
restoration work to aid or accelerate recovery. Similarly, when
wildland fires damage developed features such as roads, trails,
buildings, fences, or campgrounds, land managers may identify needed
work to repair or replace them, as shown in figures 1 and 2.
Rehabilitation and restoration projects include, for example, repairing
or maintaining roads and trails, controlling noxious and invasive
weeds, replanting forests or grasslands, repairing or replacing fences,
restoring fish or wildlife habitat, rebuilding burned facilities,
replacing boundary markers, and stabilizing archaeological sites.
Figure 1: Postfire Flood Damage at Sabino Canyon Recreation Site,
Coronado National Forest, Arizona:
[See PDF for image]
Source: Forest Service.
A Restroom and turnaround (left) in a popular recreation area near
Tucson, Arizona, were inundated with 4 feet of debris that washed down
the canyon in August 2003, 1 month after the Aspen fire was controlled.
Mud blocked the restroom door (right) and completely covered trash
cans. The rock wall behind the restroom was damaged, and the road
leading to the site was impassible. Concerns about public safety and
accessibility necessitated public-use closures for about a year as
additional floods continued to damage the site.
[End of figure]
Figure 2: Completed Rehabilitation of Sabino Canyon Recreation Site,
Coronado National Forest, Arizona:
[See PDF for image]
Source: Forest Service.
Forest Service officials repaired the damaged restroom in 2005 using
rehabilitation and restoration funding. They also replaced the small
corrugated metal pipe that existed prior to the fire with a large
grated-box culvert (foreground, left photo), to prevent future clogging
like that which caused much of the damage during the August 2003 flood.
[End of figure]
In some cases, land managers may determine that no rehabilitation or
restoration projects are needed because a fire did not have adverse
effects on any resources or infrastructure, or because the burned lands
are likely to recover on their own. Under historical conditions, many
forest and rangeland ecosystems have adapted to wildland fire, and the
vegetation, insects, fish, and wildlife in such systems benefit from
the kind of fires that occur there, surviving and regenerating after
fires occur. Fires can benefit resources by recycling soil nutrients,
renewing vegetation growth, adding material to streams that improves
spawning habitat for fish, and sustaining ecological functions. For
example, when ponderosa pine forests are adapted to wildland fires,
frequent less-intense fires remove brush and small trees, which allows
the large trees to survive and grow.
Recognizing the need to restore historic vegetation conditions to help
reduce the risks of wildland fires, as well as the need to address
adverse effects that can result from fires, in 2001 and 2002, federal
agencies, states, and others developed a 10-year strategy and
implementation plan. The strategy established four broad goals for
wildland fire management: (1) improving fire prevention and suppression
for those areas that need it; (2) reducing hazardous fuels, by
mechanically thinning forests and using controlled burns; (3) restoring
fire-adapted ecosystems and rehabilitating burned areas; and (4)
promoting community assistance to help conduct fire management
activities. The implementation plan established measures for showing
progress toward each of the goals.
Around the same time, in fiscal year 2001, Congress began providing
funds to the Forest Service and Interior specifically for postfire
rehabilitation and restoration. The funding was greatest in 2001, and
decreased after that, particularly for the Forest Service. To
administer these funds and address its rehabilitation and restoration
needs, the Forest Service relies on existing staff and programs, such
as watershed improvement and recreation programs. On the other hand,
BLM has a specific rehabilitation program and some dedicated staff to
administer its funds. BLM's program initially included both emergency
stabilization and postfire rehabilitation work, but since 2004 has been
separated into two programs. BLM's rehabilitation program covers work
up to 3 years after a fire and does not provide for subsequent postfire
restoration work. The Forest Service manages its rehabilitation and
restoration work through nine regional offices, and offices overseeing
155 national forests and 20 national grasslands across the nation. Each
forest and grassland is divided into several ranger districts. BLM
manages its rehabilitation program through state offices in 12 western
states, including Alaska, that oversee field and district offices.
Both the Forest Service and BLM manage their lands for multiple uses,
including timber production, wildlife, recreation, and wilderness
purposes. Under the National Forest Management Act, the primary law
governing the land management planning activities of national forests
in the Forest Service, all national forests must have land and resource
management plans for the lands they manage. Generally, these plans
describe desired future conditions for lands and resources in various
geographic areas within the forest, and identify strategies to maintain
or achieve those conditions. Similarly, BLM field offices develop
resource management plans under the Federal Land Policy and Management
Act for the lands they manage. Like the national forests' plans, BLM
plans identify specific desired outcomes and allowable uses and actions
to achieve those outcomes. Generally, neither agency's plans identify
strategies or actions specifically related to postfire recovery.
When agency officials identify needed projects--including postfire
rehabilitation and restoration projects--they must ensure that the
projects are consistent with these land management plans. In addition,
if a project could have environmental impacts, the agencies are
required to conduct an analysis of the potential impacts. Under the
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, agencies generally evaluate
the likely effects of projects they propose using a relatively brief
environmental assessment or, if the action would be likely to
significantly affect the environment, a more detailed environmental
impact statement. One purpose of this analysis is to ensure that
agencies have detailed information available to inform their decision
making. The agencies give the public an opportunity to comment on draft
environmental assessments and impact statements. Also, the Forest
Service and BLM have established procedures for administrative appeal
of their decisions. As a general rule, once the administrative appeals
process is complete, the public can litigate the relevant project
decision in federal court.
Forest Service and BLM Differ in How They Plan Needed Rehabilitation
and Restoration Work:
The Forest Service and BLM use similar procedures to determine whether
any rehabilitation or restoration work is needed after a wildland fire,
but they differ in how they plan, prioritize, and fund needed work.
These differences reflect the distinct approaches the Forest Service
and BLM have adopted for managing postfire rehabilitation and
restoration. The Forest Service has no national guidance for postfire
rehabilitation and restoration, in part because it does not have a
discrete program for such activities. Instead, the agency addresses its
rehabilitation and restoration needs through existing programs,
including its watershed, forest management, recreation, rangeland
management, wilderness, and construction programs, among others. Forest
Service regions and forests have discretion to determine how to plan,
prioritize, and fund needed rehabilitation and restoration work in the
context of these programs. To fund such work, the agency draws from
several different appropriations.[Footnote 4] On the other hand, BLM
has a distinct program for postfire rehabilitation, and has issued
national guidance for the program. Following this guidance, agency
officials use a standard process to plan, prioritize, and fund
rehabilitation work, nearly all of which is paid for with funds
specifically designated for rehabilitation under the wildland fire
management appropriation. BLM's rehabilitation program covers postfire
work up to 3 years after a fire, and any subsequent restoration work
must be addressed by other ongoing BLM programs, such as the wildlife
and noxious weeds programs.
Forest Service Regions and Forests Have Discretion to Plan Projects
Using Varied Procedures:
The Forest Service has no national guidance on how to identify,
prioritize, and fund postfire rehabilitation and restoration work.
According to a headquarters official, the agency has not developed
guidance in part because appropriations specifically designated for
these activities--about $12.8 million for fiscal year 2005 and $6.2
million for fiscal year 2006--did not warrant development of a manual.
Instead, the agency provides its regions and forests with wide latitude
to use varied procedures that accommodate their diverse ecosystems,
priorities, and unique circumstances.
The Forest Service allocates the appropriations designated for
rehabilitation and restoration to its regions annually based on each
region's proportion of Forest Service acreage severely burned over the
previous 5 years. The regions, in turn, allocate these funds to
forests, usually applying a prioritization system to select among
project proposals and funding requests submitted by forests. In
addition, Forest Service regions and forests use appropriations
available for activities such as reforestation and construction to help
pay for related rehabilitation and restoration work. According to
agency officials, relying on these other funds gives regions and
forests the flexibility to determine their priorities while considering
needs on burned lands as well as in other areas, and to accommodate
needs that arise after unpredictable events in addition to fires, such
as hurricanes. The Forest Service does not keep track of how much
rehabilitation and restoration work is funded through these programs.
According to agency officials, the first step in planning postfire
rehabilitation and restoration projects is for forest and district-
level staff to determine whether any such work is needed, by comparing
postfire conditions with prefire and desired conditions. Typically,
immediately after a wildland fire is contained, field officials
assemble an interdisciplinary team made up of specialists such as
foresters, wildlife biologists, hydrologists, botanists, and soil
scientists, among others, to conduct an on-the-ground evaluation of the
burned area. Officials use this evaluation along with satellite
photographs of the burned area, for example, to assess a fire's effects
on the land and resources. Finally, agency officials compare these
postfire conditions with historical photos and data on prefire
conditions, and with descriptions of desired conditions detailed in
forest plans and other guidance documents.
Agency officials told us that, in many cases, no rehabilitation or
restoration work is needed. According to the officials, there are
various reasons that natural recovery may be sufficient, and active
rehabilitation and restoration efforts may not be needed. For example,
some fires burn in areas adapted to wildland fires and leave natural
resources no worse off than before the fire, or benefit resources, for
example, by stimulating vegetation growth or increasing denning and
foraging habitat. When fires also do no damage to infrastructure such
as fences or campground facilities, there is usually no need for any
active rehabilitation or restoration, according to agency officials. In
other cases, agency officials said rehabilitation or restoration may
not be needed if the burn is not severe; the burned area is
inaccessible due to topography, legal access, or other issues; or the
fire burned in a management area where such work is precluded, such as
a wilderness or roadless area.[Footnote 5]
Often, forest officials determine that postfire rehabilitation or
restoration is needed to repair damage to resources or infrastructure,
or to prevent further damage from occurring after postfire rainstorms.
The officials must then determine what projects are needed. Many Forest
Service regions have no specific guidance for this step, and officials
rely on the guidance available in program handbooks and legislation.
For example, the trails management handbook includes guidance for
planning projects, such as how to assess trail conditions against
height, width, and other trail construction standards, depending on
whether the trail is designated primarily for use by hikers or by pack
animals as well. In addition, some laws include requirements or
provisions that guide agency officials' actions when planning projects.
For example, for projects significantly affecting the environment, the
National Environmental Policy Act requires agency officials to evaluate
the environmental impacts of the proposed project and alternatives to
the project in an environmental impact statement. Implementing
regulations for the act require the agency to provide opportunities for
the public to comment on the draft statement. In accordance with other
laws, agency officials assess whether any cultural resources, such as
archaeological sites, will be affected by their proposed actions, and
whether any threatened or endangered species--or their habitat--will be
affected.
Once forest officials determine that rehabilitation or restoration work
is needed, they have various approaches to documenting a need for the
work, depending in part on legislative requirements, as well as the
severity, complexity, and extent of the fire's effects; available
funding; anticipated level of controversy; and established regional or
forest procedures. In some cases, forests prepare rehabilitation and
restoration planning documents that describe and analyze all needed
projects for a given fire, and cover time periods up to 9 years or
longer. According to agency officials, such plans are useful when a
wildland fire has widespread, severe, or complicated effects over a
large territory and officials anticipate needing extensive analysis and
planning efforts to determine project needs, costs, and time frames.
Agency officials told us they also use comprehensive formal plans when
they expect their actions to be controversial, so that the rationale
for their decision is clearly documented. On the other hand, sometimes
agency officials do not prepare such planning documents because they do
not have enough funding or they believe the funds are better spent
elsewhere. They may instead prepare separate shorter plans in each of
the program areas affected, or create a simple spreadsheet listing
needed projects and estimated costs, for example. In other cases,
officials do not prepare any planning documents even if they believe
rehabilitation or restoration work is needed, because they do not
expect to receive funding to cover the costs of the work.
The Pacific Northwest region, unlike other Forest Service regions,
issued standardized guidance for its postfire rehabilitation and
restoration activities in December 2005, to be used by forests in the
region beginning in 2006. The guidance established a uniform process to
be followed by all forests in the region when assessing rehabilitation
and restoration needs after wildland fires or other disturbances. It is
intended to be instructional as well as to ensure consistency among
forests' project proposals, so that regional officials can compare them
equitably when deciding how to allocate funds.
Generally all of the regions follow similar processes to prioritize and
fund projects, although the specifics vary widely.[Footnote 6]
Typically, forests submit project proposals and requests for postfire
rehabilitation and restoration funding to regional officials
annually.[Footnote 7] In most regions, officials prioritize the
proposed projects, often according to a predetermined set of criteria,
and fund the highest-priority projects. Many regions include projects
that will protect human safety among the top priorities, but beyond
this similarity, priorities differ from region to region. For instance,
the Southwestern region places a higher priority on repairing and
replacing infrastructure needed for forest management, because such
infrastructure will not recover naturally. Reforestation in the
Southwestern region is lower priority, according to agency officials,
because over time, the trees will grow back naturally. Also, agency
officials at one forest in the region told us that efforts to plant
seedlings in the forest's dry climate tend to have high failure rates
especially during periods of drought. On the other hand, the Northern
region emphasizes restoration of natural resources, including
reforestation. Northern region officials said that in their region,
without active reforestation efforts, less desirable species of trees
would become dominant in some locations, perpetuating an undesirable
cycle of fires. In some regions, officials consider the forests'
priorities as well. For example, many forests consider boundary-marking
projects among their lowest priorities, but for forests where logging
operations are conducted adjacent to or on Forest Service land, such
projects are important to protect against trespass. While most regions
follow similar processes from year to year, some regional officials
told us that in years when their funding allocations were relatively
low--enough to fund only one or two projects, for example--they did not
use a formal procedure to solicit and fund project proposals because
the amount of funding did not warrant such an effort.
In addition to rehabilitation and restoration funds, some regions
allocate portions of other funds to help forests pay for projects that
are not funded with rehabilitation and restoration funds. For example,
the Southwestern region uses 50 percent of its share of the
reforestation trust fund to pay for needs after wildland fires in the
region, and directs moneys from the roads and trails fund to eligible
rehabilitation and restoration projects.[Footnote 8] Some agency
officials said that these funds, distributed at the discretion of
regional officials, can be particularly important for forests with
smaller budgets that provide little flexibility to accommodate
unpredictable expenses.
When funding is not available from the region, forests use funds for
programs such as watershed management, wildlife, and road construction
to pay for related rehabilitation and restoration projects. The budget
process for these funds begins up to 2 years in advance of when the
funds are actually needed, so agency officials must plan ahead, and any
rehabilitation and restoration projects funded through this process
must compete with normal program needs for funding. Once the budget
process is complete, there are ways to fund rehabilitation and
restoration projects even if they were not in the original budget
request. Sometimes funded projects are less costly than anticipated,
and the resulting savings can be directed toward needed rehabilitation
or restoration projects that were not in the budget. Alternatively,
forest officials may determine that some unexpected postfire
rehabilitation or restoration needs are higher priority than certain
projects already in the budget, and direct the budgeted projects' funds
to the rehabilitation or restoration work, deferring the work
originally planned.
Some Forest Service officials said they rely on sources of funding
other than appropriations specifically designated for rehabilitation
and restoration to pay for a significant portion of needed work. For
example, in 2003, the first year after the Biscuit fire in Oregon,
Forest Service officials told us they spent a total of about $7 million
on rehabilitation and restoration work; about $2 million, or 29
percent, of the total was rehabilitation and restoration funding, while
the remaining 71 percent of funds came from other sources. To complete
needed work, Forest Service officials said that in addition to
appropriations specifically designated for rehabilitation and
restoration, they use appropriations designated for activities such as
watershed improvement, road maintenance and repair, and recreation
management, as well as receipts from salvage timber sales and funding
from other sources such as states and private parties.
BLM Follows a Standard Process to Plan Rehabilitation Projects:
BLM has a standard process to identify, plan and fund any needed
postfire rehabilitation projects, guided by Department of the Interior
policy and a draft BLM handbook. The handbook prescribes specific
procedures, time frames, and rules for identifying, planning, and
funding rehabilitation work. BLM's postfire recovery program, unlike
the Forest Service's program, is limited to rehabilitation and does not
include restoration. BLM pays for nearly all of its postfire
rehabilitation work with rehabilitation funds within its wildland fire
management appropriation, and funding for such work is available for
only 3 years after a fire. According to Interior policy, any
restoration needs remaining after this time are to be incorporated into
ongoing programs of work in resource programs such as the wildlife,
noxious weeds, and rangeland management programs.
The first step in planning postfire rehabilitation work is for agency
officials in the field to assess whether any rehabilitation work is
needed. BLM headquarters officials encourage field officials to do this
immediately after a fire, at the same time they are assessing the need
for emergency stabilization projects. As with the Forest Service, BLM
field officials typically assemble an interdisciplinary team of
specialists to conduct an on-the-ground evaluation of the burned area
and compare the condition of the burned land to prefire and desired
conditions. Generally, agency officials told us they rely on historical
knowledge to determine prefire conditions, and on resource management
plans and other planning documents, as well as professional judgment,
to determine desired conditions.
In addition to its resource management plans, many BLM field offices
have preapproved plans that outline the postfire work they would do if
a wildland fire occurred on their lands. These plans, called Normal
Fire Rehabilitation Plans, are prepared for a specified management area
in advance of any fires, and describe typical projects that would be
implemented under normal conditions after a fire. The plans detail the
criteria for selecting each type of project and for determining when
such projects are not needed, and provide guidance for developing a
site-specific rehabilitation plan following a wildland fire. The
handbook recommends that field offices develop Normal Fire
Rehabilitation Plans to facilitate more efficient and timely approval
of emergency stabilization and rehabilitation plans.
In many cases, agency officials said they decide that no active
rehabilitation activities are needed. For example, BLM officials told
us that almost 10 million acres of land burned in Alaska between 2000
and 2004, but that little or no rehabilitation was needed because, for
example, the lands were adapted to wildland fire. In other cases,
agency officials said no rehabilitation was needed because the fire had
no negative impacts and the site could recover naturally. When lands
are adapted to wildland fire or a fire has no negative impacts, there
may be enough plants remaining that the site can recover naturally as
long as it is protected from further disturbances, according to the
officials.
In cases where rehabilitation work is needed, the BLM handbook requires
agency officials to identify and estimate costs for all rehabilitation
projects needed during the 3 years following the fire, and document
these elements in a plan. The plan is required, among other things, to
describe each project, how it is compatible with approved land-use
plans, and how it is related to damage or changes caused by the
wildland fire. In addition, the plans must include a provision for
monitoring the projects to determine whether they meet their
objectives.[Footnote 9] Besides requirements about the plan, the
handbook provides guidance about which activities meet the definition
of postfire rehabilitation and qualify for rehabilitation funds. This
guidance is particularly important, according to agency officials,
because BLM only recently separated its emergency stabilization program
and funding from its rehabilitation program. In addition, field staff
work with BLM state rehabilitation coordinators to clarify any
questions they have while preparing rehabilitation plans. The plans
must be completed before the end of the fiscal year during which the
fire occurred, which, in some locations, means that agency officials
typically have 1 to 3 months to complete their plans. Also, like the
Forest Service, BLM must ensure that it meets the requirements of
relevant laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the
Endangered Species Act, among others.
Once rehabilitation plans are complete, field officials submit them to
agency officials in state offices and headquarters for approval. These
officials review the plans to ensure that all proposed projects meet
eligibility requirements for rehabilitation funding, and to assess the
cost-effectiveness of the proposed projects. For projects that do not
meet the eligibility requirements or are judged to be too costly, state
and headquarters officials return the plan to field officials for
revisions and resubmission. In addition, reviewing officials may return
a plan if projects seem inappropriate or imprudent for other reasons--
for example if officials believe a proposed seeding technique will be
ineffective for the context in which it is proposed.
Approval of rehabilitation plans is only the first step; the proposed
projects must still be selected for funding. Funding for rehabilitation
projects is allocated 1 year at a time, in a departmentwide process in
which BLM's projects must compete with projects from the other Interior
agencies. At the start of each fiscal year, a team representing all of
Interior's land management agencies meets to allocate the department's
rehabilitation funding. So far, Interior has been able to fund all
needed projects that meet eligibility requirements, according to BLM
officials. As a result, agency officials told us they pay for nearly
all rehabilitation projects with rehabilitation funds. In the future,
if there are more funding requests than available funding, the
interagency team plans to assess the projects against a set of
prioritization criteria and fund only the highest-priority categories
of projects. The criteria, not yet finalized by the interagency team,
may include factors such as whether the proposed project incorporates
partners and addresses resource objectives.
Once projects are funded for a given year, BLM officials in the field
begin implementing them. At the end of each of the first 2 years
covered by the plan, officials must complete an accomplishment report
recording the projects completed during the year and their costs, as
well as a monitoring summary for the completed projects reporting
whether they were successful and whether additional projects are
needed. For any remaining work, officials must submit a funding
request. After the final year, BLM requires officials to submit a
closeout report to headquarters detailing the projects completed, their
cost, whether they were successful, and any lessons learned.
Forest Service Lacks Data on Rehabilitation and Restoration Work; BLM
Lacks Data on Restoration Work:
With available information, neither the agencies nor we could reliably
determine how much needed rehabilitation and restoration work has been
completed for Forest Service and BLM fires that occurred between 2000
and 2004. The Forest Service does not know how much rehabilitation and
restoration work has been completed because it does not maintain
comprehensive data on such work. The agency only tracks rehabilitation
and restoration work accomplished using appropriations specifically
designated for such activities under the wildland fire management
account, and does not collect data on such work paid for with other
funds. BLM officials reported completing most needed rehabilitation
work for fires between 2000 and 2004, but said they do not know how
much restoration work is needed or completed because they do not track
data on postfire restoration. We could not independently verify all of
BLM's rehabilitation data because these data are commingled with the
agency's emergency stabilization data for fires before 2004. Because
the Forest Service had no national data and we could not verify BLM's
data, we administered a survey to officials from both agencies to
obtain information about how much rehabilitation and restoration work
has been completed. However, we determined that the information
provided in the survey was not sufficiently reliable to report because
when we assessed a sample of responses, we found that in a significant
number of cases, supporting documents were either unavailable or they
did not substantiate the answers provided in the survey.
Forest Service Lacks Data to Know Whether High-Priority Needs Are Being
Addressed:
Forest Service officials acknowledged that they could not tell us what
portion of the agency's nationwide rehabilitation and restoration needs
have been addressed because they do not track such information on a
national level. Field staff are only required to report accomplishment
information for rehabilitation and restoration projects funded
specifically with rehabilitation and restoration moneys, even though
much of this work is funded through other agency programs. They are not
required to report information about how much rehabilitation and
restoration work is needed, although staff in some regions do so; they
also are not required to report information about rehabilitation and
restoration work completed using other funds. Consequently, there is no
centralized source of information about all rehabilitation and
restoration needs and accomplishments nationwide. According to a
headquarters official, the Forest Service does not require forest
officials to collect data on rehabilitation and restoration work
because the agency does not manage such work under a single program;
instead, the work cuts across multiple programs. Furthermore, the
official said the Forest Service does not maintain data on needed work
because agency officials do not expect there to be sufficient funding
to pay for all of it.
Because the Forest Service does not have comprehensive data on
rehabilitation and restoration needs and accomplishments nationwide, we
administered a survey to agency officials in the field to collect this
information, but determined that the information provided in the survey
was not sufficiently reliable to report. The survey asked for
qualitative information about rehabilitation and restoration needs and
accomplishments for a random sample of fires that occurred between 2000
and 2004 and burned over 500 acres. After administering the survey, we
requested supporting documents to validate a sample of responses.
However, we found that a significant portion of the responses were not
adequately supported. For example, in some cases, respondents
mistakenly reported information about emergency stabilization projects
rather than rehabilitation and restoration projects. In other cases, no
documentation was provided to support survey responses, or the
information in the documents contradicted the survey responses.
Consequently, we determined that the data provided in the survey could
not be reliably reported.
An interregional group of Forest Service officials reached a similar
conclusion about the agency's rehabilitation and restoration data when
it attempted to collect and report related information.[Footnote 10]
The group--tasked with developing an agencywide strategy for postfire
recovery in 2004--found that they could not identify the agency's total
rehabilitation and restoration needs and accomplishments because the
agency did not maintain consistent, reliable data about such needs. The
group noted that the Forest Service has a fire management database with
the capacity to track rehabilitation and restoration needs and
accomplishments, and that headquarters officials originally used the
system to determine priorities and funding allocations[Footnote 11].
However, they said that field staff rarely enter data into the system
because headquarters officials no longer use it this way, now that they
delegated the task of prioritizing and funding projects to the regions.
Some regions have developed their own systems to track regionwide data,
but because the systems are not consistent, the data cannot accurately
be combined or compared across regions. The interregional group
recommended that if agencywide consistency is needed for data on
rehabilitation and restoration, the Forest Service should consider
identifying the minimum data necessary and modifying existing or
emerging systems to incorporate such information.
In our visits to seven national forests and telephone interviews with
officials from all of the Forest Service regions, agency officials
reported that varied amounts of rehabilitation and restoration work
have been completed. For some fires, agency officials said they had
completed all or almost all needed rehabilitation and restoration work,
while for others, they told us that a significant amount of work
remains to be done. For example, agency officials reported that almost
all of the needed rehabilitation and restoration work is complete for
the Diamond Point fire, which burned nearly 150,000 acres in the
Payette National Forest in Idaho during the summer of 2000. According
to one official, the only work that has not been completed for that
fire is work that will not be needed until 15 or 20 years after the
fire, such as clearing hiking trails when dead trees fall in the
future. Similarly, agency officials reported completing all or almost
all needed rehabilitation and restoration work for the 3,000-acre Thorn
fire in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in 2000, and the 18,000-
acre Fridley fire in the Gallatin National Forest in 2001, among
others. In contrast, agency officials reported that a significant
portion of needed rehabilitation and restoration work remains for the
Bitterroot fires of 2000, which burned about 300,000 acres, as well as
for the Bullock and Aspen fires of 2002 and 2003, which burned a total
of about 115,000 acres in the Coronado National Forest. For the 2002
Red Waffle fire, which burned about 5,000 acres in the Custer National
Forest, agency officials told us that almost none of the needed work
had been completed. These examples suggest that, for at least some
fires, a significant portion of needed rehabilitation and restoration
work has not been completed. However, without comprehensive data,
neither we nor agency decision makers know how common this situation is
across the nation.
Furthermore, while we found that a substantial portion of needed work
remains undone for some fires, it is unclear whether more should be
done at this point because the Forest Service has no clear time frames
for completing such work. Some Forest Service officials told us that,
although they had not yet completed all of the rehabilitation and
restoration work they believed was needed, they were not concerned
because they planned to complete the work over the course of 5 or 10
years after the fire. Few of the agency officials we interviewed
reported adverse effects that had already resulted from not completing
projects. However, some officials expressed concern about future
effects, such as compromised water quality and loss of forest habitat,
that could result if needs were left unmet over the long term.
Given constrained budgets and competing priorities, a headquarters
official explained that the Forest Service does not expect forests to
complete every needed rehabilitation and restoration project; instead,
forests are expected to complete the high-priority projects. However,
agency officials do not know whether they have addressed the highest
priority projects nationwide, because they do not track this
information, either. In our interviews with officials in the field, we
found that regions have addressed their priorities to varying degrees
from year to year and region to region. For example, in 2004, the
Intermountain region was able to fund the top 14 of its 20 priority
categories, while the Southwestern region was only able to fund the top
2 of its 9 priority categories using rehabilitation and restoration
funds.[Footnote 12] As a result, the Southwestern region identified
about $5.2 million in unfunded needs that year, including about $2.3
million in high-priority needs, according to an agency official.
However, in fiscal year 2005, because the Southwestern region received
about $7 million in rehabilitation and restoration funds--an increase
of more than $6 million over the previous year--the region was able to
address its backlog, agency officials told us. For fiscal year 2006,
the region was allocated under $1 million and expects once again to
only address projects in its top 1 or 2 priority categories, leaving
what agency officials estimate to be millions of dollars in needs
unfunded. While some regional officials tracked such information,
others did not, and none of the regions routinely reported such
information to headquarters. Consequently, Forest Service officials
make management and funding decisions without knowing, on a national
scale, whether the agency is keeping pace with its high-priority
rehabilitation and restoration needs.
BLM Officials Report Completing Most Rehabilitation Work, but Do Not
Know Whether Restoration Needs Are Being Addressed:
BLM officials told us that, according to agency data, most
rehabilitation work needed for fires that occurred between 2000 and
2004 has been completed. The agency requires field staff to report all
rehabilitation needs to headquarters in rehabilitation plans and budget
requests. BLM officials in each state office assemble and review the
data on budget requests and allocations for all of the district and
field offices within the state. Once rehabilitation work is funded,
agency officials said there are only a few factors--such as unusual
weather or other unanticipated events--that prevent the work from being
completed. Consequently, agency officials infer that nearly all needed
work that has been funded through fiscal year 2005 has been completed.
In addition, BLM tracks nationwide data on the total number of acres
that have been rehabilitated, and reviews the data for any anomalies,
correcting errors when found. The agency reports this information to
Congress each year in its budget request as well as in its annual
report on public lands.[Footnote 13] Further, one agency official
reported that BLM is currently revising its performance measures, and
is planning to report the percentage and number of acres identified in
rehabilitation plans as needing rehabilitation treatments that actually
received the treatments. The agency has begun to informally collect
these data in fiscal year 2006 to prepare for reporting the information
in the future.
While BLM collects data on nationwide rehabilitation needs and
accomplishments, we could not independently verify the data because,
for fires before 2004, the agency's rehabilitation and emergency
stabilization data are commingled. In an effort to collect this
information, we administered a survey to agency officials in the field.
The survey we administered to BLM officials asked for qualitative
information about rehabilitation needs and accomplishments for a random
sample of BLM fires that occurred between 2000 and 2004 and burned over
500 acres. However, like the Forest Service survey, when we compared a
sample of responses to supporting documents, we found that a
significant portion of responses were not adequately supported.
Specifically, we found that respondents sometimes reported information
about emergency stabilization work rather than rehabilitation work.
While we recognize that this could be a result of the relatively recent
separation between the two programs in 2004, we determined that the
data provided in the survey were not reliable.
In our visits to three BLM field locations and interviews with BLM
officials from four state offices, agency officials consistently
reported completing all or almost all rehabilitation work that was
needed for fires that occurred between 2000 and 2004. For example, in
Idaho, BLM officials told us that all of the agency's rehabilitation
work identified as needed in the state during this time period has been
funded, and that nearly all of the funded work has been completed.
Several officials told us that the only incomplete work is that needed
beyond the first 3 years after a fire, which is defined as restoration
work. Agency officials in Oregon, Utah, and Nevada also reported
completing nearly all needed rehabilitation work, with few exceptions-
-such as work that was hindered by uncontrollable events like weather,
or work needed beyond 3 years after a fire.
Although BLM keeps close track of its postfire rehabilitation needs and
accomplishments nationwide, and reports completing most of this work,
the agency's rehabilitation program does not fund or track any
restoration work--that is, work needed more than 3 years after a fire.
Instead, Interior policy calls for any restoration needs to be
addressed by other agency programs, such as the wildlife, noxious weed,
or rangeland management programs. However, BLM officials we talked with
did not know whether these other programs were addressing postfire
restoration needs. Several BLM officials indicated that continued
monitoring beyond the 3-year period is important in some cases to
determine the effectiveness of projects that have been completed. One
BLM analysis of postfire projects from 1999 to 2003 concluded that time
and funding limits on monitoring prevented field officials from
determining the success or failure of some projects. In some cases for
which projects were known to be only partially successful, agency
officials said that if they could identify and address the issue right
away--for example, by seeding native plants so that invasive species
could not expand--they could avoid losing their original investment.
Forest Service and BLM Officials Cite Different Challenges to
Rehabilitating and Restoring Their Lands:
Forest Service and BLM officials reported different challenges to their
efforts to rehabilitate or restore their lands after fires. Forest
Service officials cited a lack of funding, transfers of funding for
fire suppression, and erratic funding levels from year to year as
hindering their rehabilitation and restoration efforts. In addition,
some Forest Service officials told us that controversy around certain
types of postfire activities, market forces, and insufficient workforce
made it difficult to address needed rehabilitation and restoration
work. For BLM, headquarters and field officials told us that while they
have completed most of their projects, they face challenges in
achieving long-term success with some projects. Many of BLM's seeding
and planting projects fail or are only partially successful when new
plants do not become established because of drought, soil conditions,
or planting techniques, for example. To address this issue, BLM
officials said they are now monitoring rehabilitation treatments more
comprehensively to learn why treatments are effective or not, and have
begun developing standard monitoring protocols, a database to track
project information and success rates, and a Web-based information-
sharing network that will allow staff to share lessons learned.
Forest Service Reports Funding and Other Issues Hinder Its
Rehabilitation and Restoration Efforts:
According to Forest Service officials, various factors related to
funding hindered their postfire rehabilitation and restoration efforts.
Specifically, agency officials reported that a lack of dedicated funds,
the transfer of funds to pay for fire suppression, and the low priority
of one project compared with others competing for the same funds
prevented completion of some projects. Regarding the lack of dedicated
funds, several officials we interviewed cited the downward trend in
funding for postfire rehabilitation and restoration, and commented that
funding for other programs had not increased to compensate. According
to a regional official, in 2004, forests in the Northern region
identified about $46 million in rehabilitation and restoration needs
attributable to the previous year's fires, but the region had only
about $3 million in rehabilitation and restoration funds to allocate to
the forests. Officials in several regions told us that, although their
projects had been approved for rehabilitation and restoration funding,
much of the funding was transferred to pay for fire
suppression.[Footnote 14] For example, after 307,000 acres burned in
the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana, forest officials identified
and received funding for about $30 million in rehabilitation and
restoration work in 2002. However, according to these officials, later
that year most of the funding--about $26 million--was transferred to
pay for fire suppression elsewhere. Consequently, the forest did not
have enough funding to pay for all of the work, and as of March 2006,
much of it still had not been done. According to agency officials, the
situation was made worse because they had made assurances to the
public, which expected the Forest Service to complete the work they
planned.
In other cases, agency officials told us they were not able to complete
some rehabilitation and restoration projects because they were lower
priority than other needed work on the forest. For example, after a
wildland fire at the Custer National Forest in Montana, officials told
us that they needed to thin the forest to reduce the risk of a future
fire causing severe damage. However, this fuels reduction project,
located far from any communities, was not selected for funding at the
regional level, and it was not funded by the forest because the
forest's budget could only accommodate the highest-priority fuels
reduction projects--where communities would be threatened if a wildland
fire started.
In addition, during our field visits, officials told us that erratic
funding levels hindered their ability to address postfire
rehabilitation and restoration needs. Specifically, agency officials
said that the amount of rehabilitation and restoration funding
headquarters allocated to the regions has fluctuated dramatically from
year to year, making it difficult to plan budgets. For example, the
Southwestern region received about $600,000 in fiscal year 2004, about
$6.8 million in 2005, and about $900,000 in 2006. Based on 2004 funding
levels, forests in the region did not expect to receive substantial
funding in 2005. When about $6.8 million became available, however,
some Southwestern forests could not spend all of the money before the
end of the year because they had not hired additional seasonal staff,
prepared contracting or planning documents, or otherwise established
the necessary infrastructure to spend the funds and implement needed
work.
Agency officials reported that factors unrelated to funding also
hindered their ability to address needed postfire rehabilitation and
restoration work. Even if there were unlimited funding, some officials
told us they would be limited by the size of their staff or other
operational constraints, such as the length of their field season. For
example, in 2005, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest received about
$2.4 million for needed rehabilitation and restoration after the Rodeo-
Chediski fire. However, because of their limited staff and the time
required to complete the contracting process, which they only initiated
in February when they learned that they would receive the funding,
forest officials said they were not able to spend all of the funds.
Exacerbating the challenge, the Forest Service was implementing a new
procurement system at the time, which officials said took additional
time to learn. In other cases, agency officials anticipated workforce
and operational limitations, and accounted for them by developing long-
range plans with annual workloads that could be accommodated within
such limitations. However, because these plans covered longer time
periods, planned work was still incomplete several years after a fire.
For example, at the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, officials
planned to spread the needed work out over a period of 10 years or
more, scheduling a feasible workload each year, given projected staff
and infrastructure constraints.
Forest Service officials also noted that controversy about postfire
activities presented challenges. General dissonance about the role of
natural recovery versus managed recovery, as well as disagreement about
specific decisions, such as whether to use chemical herbicides and
whether to harvest burned timber as part of restoration efforts,
created challenges for agency officials and sometimes prevented
projects from being completed. Forest managers use herbicides to, for
example, control the spread of invasive weeds or eradicate vegetation
that competes with young seedlings planted to reforest burned lands.
Its use is controversial, however, because herbicides can be harmful to
native vegetation, wildlife, water, and soils. Harvesting burned timber
is also controversial. Supporters say that the timber should be
harvested to capture its economic value and remove its potential to
fuel future fires, while critics say the burned trees should be left
for wildlife habitat and to avoid any impacts that could be caused by
harvesting operations.
Because of the controversy surrounding these issues, agency officials
said they often invested more time and resources in developing
defensible documents to support their decisions, which sometimes
delayed project implementation. Also, appeals and litigation of such
decisions sometimes caused projects to be delayed. For example, after a
2001 wildland fire at the Tahoe National Forest in California, the
Forest Service spent a year preparing a plan, finalized in 2002, that
proposed harvesting and selling burned timber both outside and within a
roadless area to help finance needed rehabilitation work. The agency
began harvesting timber outside the roadless area and had virtually
completed doing so by July 2004. However, in response to a lawsuit, a
federal district court issued a preliminary injunction in August 2004,
prohibiting the Forest Service from harvesting timber inside the
roadless area. In February 2006, the agency settled the case, agreeing
not to harvest timber in the roadless area. By that point--4-1/2 years
after the fire--agency officials said that the value of the timber had
declined to the point that it was no longer feasible to sell it.
Faced with repeated decisions about harvesting burned timber, some
Forest Service officials expressed concern that there is insufficient
scientific evidence to support one action or another, and further noted
that little research is being done to address the question. In a 2004
report entitled "Strategy for Post-Fire Recovery," an interregional
group of Forest Service officials noted that there is "very limited
scientific information on long-term effects of uncharacteristically
severe fires, the effectiveness of post-fire rehabilitation and
restoration treatments, or the impacts of post-fire timber harvesting."
Without such information, they concluded, "Policy choices are often
based on ideology and emotion rather than objective scientific
information."[Footnote 15] According to one Forest Service scientist,
there is an urgent need for more information on salvage logging--
especially information about the effects of logging operations under
various conditions and in different geographic locations because such
effects vary widely depending on the type and extent of logging, site
conditions, and climatic conditions. Moreover, such research is needed
to improve the models used by agency decision makers to predict the
potential impacts of proposed actions such as locations and rates of
erosion because, currently, none of them account for the effects of
salvage logging on the postfire environment.
The 2002 Biscuit fire in Oregon, which has been a focal point for
recent debates about harvesting burned timber, has also drawn attention
to the role of scientific research. After the fire, a study was
published stating that removing dead and dying trees from the Biscuit
fire area would reduce the risk of recurring large-scale fires in the
area.[Footnote 16] Forest Service officials decided to offer 12 sales
of burned timber, as part of a larger recovery plan, one purpose of
which was to reduce the risk of such fires. The sales were
controversial and were the target of legal challenges, but the timber
was ultimately harvested in 2004 and 2005. In 2006, a study was
published concluding that salvage logging after the Biscuit fire may
have been counterproductive to forest recovery goals in part because,
during the logging operations, some seedlings were destroyed.[Footnote
17] Release of the study spurred additional controversy and media
attention. In response, the study's authors issued a statement saying
that "the controversy over the topic of postfire logging is indicative
of how little is known about its effects." In a congressional hearing
on the topic, other scientists and researchers told members of Congress
that there is not a lot of peer-reviewed science on this issue, and a
sustained commitment to such research is needed. Several bills pending
before Congress contain provisions for research, pilot projects, and
monitoring, related to the effects of postfire harvest.[Footnote 18]
In addition to controversy, Forest Service officials told us that
factors related to market forces also hinder their efforts to harvest
burned timber after fires. For example, sometimes the trees burned in
wildland fires are too small to be of any commercial value. Other
times, a long distance to the nearest timber mill or difficult access
to the burned timber reduces the cost-effectiveness of a project for
the timber purchaser, especially because burned timber loses value over
time as it deteriorates. In some locations, the small number of nearby
timber mills can limit competitive bidding. For example, at the
Eldorado National Forest in California, the Forest Service offered
burned timber for sale in 2005 but received no bids on most of the
sales because the only timber company close enough to harvest the trees
was already busy with timber from previous sales. Agency officials said
they were concerned that if too much time passed, the timber would lose
value and the sale would no longer be economically viable. In the fall
of 2005, they lowered the price of the timber and completed the sales.
While agency officials acknowledged that market forces had sometimes
hindered their ability to sell burned timber, they said this had not
always been the case, and it was difficult to predict whether or how
such forces might affect a sale.
To address challenges related to the controversy over salvage logging
and in recognition of the shortage of related scientific research
available, the Forest Service has begun to conduct such research in the
past several years--for example, through its wildland fire research and
development program. In addition, the Joint Fire Science Program--a
partnership of six federal agencies, including the Forest Service--has
called for and funded some research proposals in this area. In its
October 2005 announcement, the program specifically sought proposals
from agency and university scientists "that evaluate the effects and
effectiveness of postfire management activities, including but not
limited to burned area emergency stabilization, rehabilitation,
restoration treatments, and postfire removal of woody material (e.g.,
salvage logging, biomass utilization)." In May 2006, the program funded
several studies in this area. For example, one Forest Service
researcher received funding to study the effects of different salvage-
logging techniques at a few sites and develop some guidelines for use
by land managers. While we commend the Forest Service for taking these
initial steps, it will require a long-term commitment to the issue to
accumulate research that provides sufficient information about the
effects of salvage logging under various conditions, including diverse
geographic locations and ecosystem types, and different burn
severities, logging techniques, soil conditions, species types, and
other features.
To address challenges related to funding, Forest Service officials said
they changed the formula for allocating rehabilitation and restoration
funds to regions in fiscal year 2006, so that funding levels would be
more stable from year to year, but did not request additional
rehabilitation and restoration funds from Congress because of competing
program priorities. The new formula for allocating funds considers the
amount of lands burned in each region over the previous 5 years, in
contrast to the old formula, which considered only the lands burned
during the prior year. This way, if acres burned in a region fluctuate
dramatically from year to year, funding levels do not follow the
erratic pattern. Also, the new system considers only severely burned
acres rather than also considering the total number of acres burned in
each region, as did the old formula. According to agency officials,
severely burned lands are more likely to need rehabilitation or
restoration than are lands burned at moderate or low severity. Finally,
agency officials plan to exclude wilderness acres beginning in fiscal
year 2007 because, in many cases, wilderness lands need little or no
active rehabilitation or restoration projects because they are managed
to recover naturally. Agency officials said they have not requested
more rehabilitation and restoration funding from Congress because,
given the current environment of constrained budgets, they did not
expect an overall increase in the agency's budget and did not want to
sacrifice other critical programs' budgets. Also, the officials
explained that by receiving relatively more funding for other programs,
they maintained more flexibility to determine how to spend the funds.
This way, if postfire rehabilitation or restoration work was the
highest-priority work for a forest, it could direct its regular program
funds to pay for it. On the other hand, if the forest had other higher-
priority work needs, such as rehabilitating lands after a hurricane or
repairing roads to meet basic safety standards, it could fund these
needs.
BLM Cites Challenges to Ensuring Success of Completed Seeding and
Planting Projects:
Although BLM officials reported completing most of the agency's needed
rehabilitation projects, some officials expressed concern that these
completed projects were not always successful. BLM officials in several
states told us that many of their seeding and planting projects did not
successfully establish new vegetation because the seeds did not
germinate, or germinated but later died. For example, after a 2002
wildland fire in Idaho, BLM officials seeded about 4,400 acres of land,
but 3 years later, most of the plants had not survived. Field office
officials speculated that this was due to several factors, including
drought, competition from invasive weeds such as cheatgrass, poor seed
viability, and an insufficient number of seeds. In an initial attempt
to understand the extent of its planting challenge, a BLM official
reviewed rehabilitation monitoring reports submitted after fires
occurring from 1999 through 2003, and found that a significant portion
of the projects were described as failures or as only partially
successful. BLM officials qualified these results, emphasizing that
success is a subjective standard, and cited a need for improved
standards and guidance for determining and reporting success of
rehabilitation projects. Nevertheless, the officials acknowledged that
the low success rate should be a cause for concern.
According to BLM officials, a variety of factors can cause planting and
seeding projects to fail or to be only partially successful. For
example, BLM officials we interviewed frequently singled out lack of
precipitation as a key factor causing projects to fail. In some BLM
locations, agency officials told us that months can go by with little
or no precipitation, and many species will not germinate without
moisture. Also, there are technical factors that can influence a
project's degree of success. Sometimes seeds do not grow when initially
planted because they are not viable or the variety selected is not
appropriate for the environment in which they are planted. Other times,
it is because the seeds are damaged during application, or planted too
late in the season or too deep in the soil. Alternatively, seeds may
successfully germinate, but the seedlings later die because, for
example, there are not enough available nutrients or moisture in the
soil. The BLM official who reviewed recent rehabilitation-monitoring
reports highlighted the poor success rates of sagebrush-planting
projects that relied on aerial seeding, a technique to distribute seeds
by aircraft (see fig. 3). For the aerial-seeding projects, agency
officials estimated that more than half either failed or were only
partially successful. Another study concluded that aerially seeding
sagebrush following select Idaho fires was "not a reliable, effective
seeding method," at least in the sites studied. Sagebrush shrubs were
not established on 23 of the 35 projects in the study.[Footnote 19]
Figure 3: A Helicopter Prepares to Aerially Seed a Burned Area after a
2005 BLM Fire:
[See PDF for image]
Source: BLM.
[End of figure]
When postfire seeding or planting projects are not successful, invasive
weeds can spread, crowding out native species, increasing fire
frequency, and displacing wildlife habitat. This is because after a
wildland fire burns in a forest or rangeland, an opening is left for
plants to grow, and if land managers do not successfully establish
plants in such an opening immediately, invasive species--which multiply
rapidly and compete aggressively with other plants for nutrients,
water, and sunlight--often fill the void. Once they have arrived,
invasive plants are hard to eradicate. Some invasive plants, such as
cheatgrass, have increased the frequency of wildland fires in western
grasslands because they add to fuel loads, become dry early in the
summer when wildland fires are most common, and can grow back after
fires. In some locations where cheatgrass has invaded ecosystems that
cannot handle frequent, intense fires, native plants and animals have
been nearly eliminated. In other cases, failure of seeding or planting
projects can directly result in a loss of wildlife habitat. For
example, wildlife such as the sage grouse, pronghorn antelope, and mule
deer are dependent on sagebrush for their survival, so when sagebrush
projects fail, these animals lose their habitats.
BLM officials are aware of and concerned about the success rate of
postfire planting and seeding projects. In an effort to learn more
about and improve the effectiveness of these projects, BLM has taken
several actions. Specifically, in fiscal year 2005, BLM began requiring
field staff to monitor all rehabilitation projects for effectiveness,
and document the assessment in a closeout report completed at the end
of the third year of rehabilitation activities. In fiscal years 2004
and 2005, monitoring work was funded through the emergency
stabilization program under the wildland fire operations account.
According to a BLM official, this was to ensure that funding would be
available for monitoring. In fiscal year 2006, however, BLM began to
use rehabilitation funds to pay for monitoring rehabilitation projects,
in accordance with agency policy. In addition, in response to a
previous GAO recommendation, BLM is working with the Forest Service and
the United States Geological Survey to develop standard monitoring
protocols, so that agencywide monitoring data will be comparable and
can facilitate learning. With consistent monitoring protocols, agency
officials expect to be able to isolate some of the common factors that
cause seeding projects to fail under various conditions. For example,
they hope to identify seed types and planting techniques that work best
in arid climates, with certain types of soils, or in competition with
particular invasive weeds. In response to another GAO recommendation,
BLM, the Forest Service, and the United States Geological Survey are
also working together to develop a data system that can serve as a
repository of information and lessons learned through implementing and
monitoring rehabilitation projects[Footnote 20]. The agencies have
implemented a pilot to test the data system in Nevada, and they expect
to begin development of the nationwide system in fiscal year 2008.
Conclusions:
Faced with millions of acres of burned federal lands, the Forest
Service and BLM have a daunting task in identifying and addressing
postfire rehabilitation and restoration needs. Given the enormity of
the task and the scarcity of funding to address needed rehabilitation
and restoration work, the Forest Service has chosen to give its regions
and forests the discretion to decide what, if any, rehabilitation or
restoration work is warranted, given competing priorities. While we
agree that a degree of freedom is appropriate, so that the agency can
accommodate diverse ecosystems and unique circumstances, the Forest
Service must balance this freedom with its obligation to be accountable
to the public and Congress. Without complete information on the
magnitude of its rehabilitation and restoration needs relative to its
capacity to address them, the Forest Service can neither make informed
funding decisions nor show Congress and the public whether it is
keeping pace with the most critical postfire work. Because the Forest
Service already has a system to capture and report some data on
rehabilitation and restoration accomplishments, expanding its use might
be a straightforward way to provide a more complete picture of the
agency's high-priority rehabilitation and restoration needs relative to
its accomplishments.
For its part, BLM has acknowledged that one limitation of its
rehabilitation program is its 3-year time constraint, which precludes
any subsequent restoration work from being implemented under the
program. In some cases, the time constraint also limits the agency's
ability to monitor rehabilitation projects long enough to ascertain
whether they are successful, a critical shortfall given BLM's challenge
with success rates. In recognition of this limitation, agency officials
have said--and we agree--that the program could be improved by
extending management and data-tracking efforts beyond the initial 3
years to better understand whether long-term restoration needs are
being addressed.
With millions of acres of burned lands, the Forest Service and BLM face
significant challenges in addressing rehabilitation and restoration
needs. While there are no quick fixes for these challenges, there are
some actions the agencies could take to smooth the way. BLM has already
taken the first steps toward improving its understanding about how
frequently its rehabilitation projects fail and why. The Forest Service
could improve the foundation from which it makes decisions about
postfire work that may be controversial, including postfire timber
harvests, by conducting additional research in this area, so that such
decisions can be informed by ample scientific evidence rather than the
limited number of studies currently available.
Recommendations for Executive Action:
To help Congress and the Forest Service make more informed funding
decisions, and to help the Forest Service better address its high-
priority postfire rehabilitation and restoration needs, we recommend
that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the Forest Service to take the
following two actions:
* Track and report to Congress all high-priority rehabilitation and
restoration work needed and accomplished, regardless of funding source.
* Conduct additional research on the beneficial and harmful effects of
postfire projects, including but not limited to, postfire timber
harvests.
To help ensure that long-term postfire restoration needs are addressed
on BLM lands, we also recommend that the Secretary of the Interior
direct BLM to address postfire restoration needs that persist more than
3 years after a fire by establishing a procedure to transfer any
incomplete work--including monitoring--from the rehabilitation program
to other ongoing programs, and by tracking and reporting to Congress
the status of all needed and completed postfire restoration work in
those programs.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
We received comments on a draft of this report from the Forest Service
and Interior. The Forest Service, in comments provided via email,
generally agreed with our findings and recommendations. With respect to
our recommendation to conduct additional research on the effects of
post-fire projects, the Forest Service noted that it will need to set
priorities for this work. While we recognize that the Forest Service
must balance competing priorities when allocating its resources, we
continue to believe that such research warrants particular emphasis
because of the heightened controversy surrounding some postfire
projects, including postfire timber harvests, and the relative shortage
of available scientific information in this area. The Forest Service
also provided additional comments, which we have incorporated in this
report where appropriate. Interior, in a written letter reproduced in
appendix II, concurred with the report's findings and recommendations.
As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce its contents
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days
from the report date. At that time, we will send copies to the
Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of the Interior, Chief of the
Forest Service, and Director of BLM. We also will make copies available
to others upon request. In addition, this report will be available at
no charge on the GAO Web site at [Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov].
If you or your staff have questions about this report, please contact
me at (202) 512-3841 or nazzaror@gao.gov. Contact points for our
Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on
the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to
this report are listed in appendix III.
Sincerely yours,
Signed by:
Robin M. Nazzaro:
Director, Natural Resources and Environment:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
The objectives of our study were to determine (1) how the Forest
Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) identify and plan
postfire rehabilitation and restoration activities; (2) how much needed
rehabilitation and restoration work the agencies have completed for
wildland fires that occurred between 2000 and 2004; and (3) the
challenges the agencies face in addressing their needs, and any actions
they are taking in response.
Planning Rehabilitation and Restoration Activities:
To learn how the Forest Service and BLM identify and plan postfire
rehabilitation and restoration activities, we reviewed agency documents
and interviewed officials in headquarters, regional and state offices,
and local units. We collected and reviewed documents on policies,
procedures, and practices relevant to rehabilitation and restoration
activities in both agencies. These included interagency agreements,
such as one establishing common definitions for rehabilitation and
restoration, as well as departmental, agency headquarters, and regional
or state guidance for nonemergency rehabilitation and restoration
activities. We reviewed relevant portions of agency manuals and
handbooks, documents detailing procedures for identifying needed
postfire activities, as well as any documents describing prioritization
and funding approval processes. For select fires, we reviewed
environmental impact statements, needs assessments, rehabilitation
plans, and other relevant planning documents. When we adjusted dollars
for inflation, we used the gross domestic product (chained) price
index, with 2001 as the base year.
We also visited regions and states with large numbers of acres burned
by wildland fire--excluding Alaska, where the agencies conducted little
or no rehabilitation or restoration work after wildland fires. For the
Forest Service, we visited the Northern, Pacific Northwest, Pacific
Southwest, and Southwestern regions to interview officials that manage
lands in Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota,
Oregon, Washington, and parts of Idaho. In each of the four regions, we
visited one or two forests and interviewed forest-and district-level
staff. In addition, we contacted officials in Forest Service
headquarters and all of the agency's regions by telephone to discuss
how the Forest Service identifies, plans, and funds postfire
rehabilitation and restoration activities. For BLM, we visited Idaho
and Oregon to interview officials in BLM's state and field offices
there. We also contacted, by telephone, officials in BLM's headquarters
and Utah and Nevada state offices to discuss how they identify and plan
rehabilitation activities.
Amount of Needed Rehabilitation and Restoration Work That Has Been
Completed:
To determine how much needed rehabilitation and restoration work the
Forest Service and BLM have completed, we collected available national,
regional, state, and local data on project needs and accomplishments,
interviewed Forest Service and BLM officials at all levels to ascertain
their subjective assessments of the extent to which they had addressed
postfire rehabilitation and restoration needs, and reviewed relevant
agency reports. We also met with field staff to discuss proposed and
completed projects for select fires and conducted detailed reviews of
these needs and accomplishments using a structured data collection
instrument. In addition, we conducted a Web-based survey of agency
officials in the field, but after checking a sample of survey responses
against supporting documents, we determined that the information
provided in the survey was not sufficiently reliable to report.
Survey Design:
We selected a stratified random sample of 276 fires from the population
of BLM and Forest Service fires that burned more than 500 acres and
occurred between 2000 and 2004. The sample was stratified by agency and
by year (2000-2002 and 2003-2004), so that results could be generalized
for each stratum as well as in the aggregate. To identify the universe
of these fires, we combined two separate lists of fires obtained from
the Forest Service and BLM. We excluded fires that occurred in Alaska
because Forest Service officials reported little, and BLM officials
reported no, postfire rehabilitation activity in Alaska during this
period.
Our survey asked agency officials to provide qualitative information
about needed projects, the portion of those projects completed, factors
that hindered their ability to complete needed projects, and any
effects associated with not completing projects. We surveyed Forest
Service officials about both rehabilitation and restoration projects,
but we surveyed BLM officials only about rehabilitation projects
because BLM's postfire programs do not include restoration. Also, to
account for BLM projects implemented before BLM separated its emergency
stabilization projects from its rehabilitation projects in 2004, we
requested that agency officials use the current interagency definitions
of emergency stabilization and rehabilitation when providing
information about all rehabilitation projects.
To identify potential survey questions, we interviewed Forest Service
and BLM officials at headquarters and in the field, and reviewed agency
documents and other reports. We took several quality assurance steps to
minimize nonsampling errors, which can be introduced, for example, when
respondents do not understand questions or do not have the information
required to answer questions. Social science survey specialists
designed draft questionnaires, and we conducted six pretests with
agency officials in the field. After each pretest, we conducted an
interview to determine (1) the extent to which respondents interpreted
questions and response categories consistently, (2) whether respondents
had the necessary information to answer the questions, and (3) how long
it took individuals to complete the survey. In addition, we asked
headquarters officials with national responsibility for postfire work
in each agency to review our draft questionnaires and provide comments.
Based on the results of these pretests and comments, we made multiple
revisions to the survey.
To determine to whom to send our survey, we contacted forest
supervisors or natural resources directors in the Forest Service, and
state office rehabilitation coordinators in the BLM, and asked them to
identify the field staff most knowledgeable about rehabilitation and
restoration for each fire in our sample. In a few cases--where we
lacked timely contact information or the person we initially contacted
referred us to someone else--we asked agency field officials to forward
the survey to the appropriate person.
Survey Administration and Data Verification:
We administered the survey via the internet for 8 weeks between
November 21, 2005, and January 13, 2006, and at the close of our
administration period, we had received a total of 256 responses for an
overall response rate of 93 percent. After the survey, we checked the
survey data and verified the data analysis programming. We also
verified select responses for 10 percent of surveys that we randomly
selected from those that had been completed. Specifically, we verified
responses to questions about the proportion of projects completed for a
particular fire and the funding sources used to pay for such projects
by contacting respondents and requesting supporting documents--such as
project plans, accomplishment reports, and contracts--to compare their
survey responses with information in the documents. Our verification
revealed that a significant portion of responses were not supported by
the documentation we received. As shown in table 1, we found that in 6
of the 26 cases, none of the responses we checked were fully supported;
in another 6 cases, only some of the responses were supported; and in
14 cases, all were supported.
Table 1: Verification Results for Survey Responses about Project
Completion and Funding:
Forest Service fires;
All responses supported: 5;
Mix of supported, unsupported, and uncertain level of support for
responses: 5;
No responses supported: 3.
BLM fires;
All responses supported: 9;
Mix of supported, unsupported, and uncertain level of support for
responses: 1;
No responses supported: 3.
Total fires;
All responses supported: 14;
Mix of supported, unsupported, and uncertain level of support for
responses: 6;
No responses supported: 6.
Source: GAO.
[End of table]
For example, sometimes responses were not supported because respondents
had mistakenly reported information about emergency stabilization
activities or funding, rather than rehabilitation and restoration
activities or funding. Other times, respondents had either erroneously
transferred the information from supporting documents to our survey, or
had no documentation to support their answers. Overall, this outcome
indicates that there is a degree of nonsampling error in our survey
results that is not quantifiable, but which we determined is too great
to ensure sufficient reliability.
Challenges to Addressing Needs:
To determine what challenges the Forest Service and BLM face in
addressing postfire rehabilitation and restoration needs, and what
actions, if any, they are taking in response, we relied on interviews
with agency officials and agency documents. In our interviews with
agency officials at all levels, we asked about challenges at the
program level as well as the project level, and about actions the
agencies are taking to address such challenges. During our visits to
the field, we also observed rehabilitation or restoration project sites
and discussed challenges officials faced in successfully completing
those and other projects. We reviewed Forest Service and BLM reports
describing agencywide challenges as well as select reports detailing
challenges to addressing rehabilitation or restoration needs for a
specific fire. To better understand some challenges agency officials
reported, and some actions they are taking in response to challenges,
we conducted additional interviews with agency research scientists,
biologists, and ecologists, and reviewed relevant agency studies.
We conducted our work from May 2005 through May 2006 in accordance with
generally accepted government auditing standards.
[End of section]
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of the Interior:
Office Of The Secretary:
Washington, D.C. 20240
Jun 22, 2006:
Ms. Robin M. Nazzaro:
Director, Natural Resources and Environment:
Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20548-0001:
Dear Ms. Nazzaro:
Thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on the Government
Accountability Office's (GAO) draft report Wildland Fire Rehabilitation
and Restoration - Forest Service and BLM Could Benefit from Improved
Information on Status of Needed Work (GAO-06-670). The following
general and specific comments are provided.
General Comments:
We appreciate the GAO's understanding of the Bureau of Land
Management's (BLM) multiple-use mission to manage 261 million acres of
public land, including 55 million acres of forests and woodlands, and
concur with the GAO's findings and recommendations, as they relate to
the BLM.
The GAO's recommendations reinforce the BLM's strategy of transferring
any incomplete work, including monitoring, from the rehabilitation
program to other ongoing resource management programs, such as range
(and weed) management, monitoring, and restoration.
Specific Comments:
* Under current funding levels, the BLM's burned area rehabilitation
needs are being met. Because restoration work is long term, it is
assessed and funded separately.
* The BLM will clearly identify post-fire rehabilitation work that has
not been completed and restoration work needed in subsequent years.
This information will be provided to the line manager responsible for
ensuring that rehabilitation is completed and restoration needs are
identified and ranked in priority order.
* A performance measure for "Burned Area Rehabilitation" is being
developed.
* In response to the GAO's comment on page 8, the BLM hopes to improve
the success of planting techniques by improving data gathering and
monitoring to identify optimal planting methods.
Thank you again for your outstanding team that worked with the BLM on
this assignment. If you have any questions, please contact Jack Hamby,
Deputy Division Chief, Division of Rangeland Resources, on 202-452-
7747, or Andrea Nygren, BLM Audit Liaison Officer, on 202-452-5153.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
R.M. "Johnnie" Burton:
Director, Minerals Management Service:
Exercising the delegated authority of the Assistant Secretary, Land and
Minerals Management:
[End of section]
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contact:
Robin Nazzaro, (202) 512-3841 or nazzaror@gao.gov:
Staff Acknowledgments:
In addition to the contact named above, David P. Bixler, Assistant
Director; Carl Barden; Mark Braza; Sandy Davis; Christine Feehan; Rich
Johnson; Alison O'Neill; Anthony Padilla; and Judy Pagano made key
contributions to this report.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The Department of the Interior's federal land management agencies
include the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Fish
and Wildlife Service.
[2] Years cited in this report refer to calendar years except where
otherwise specified.
[3] Dollar amounts are presented in nominal terms--unadjusted for
inflation--unless otherwise noted.
[4] The Forest Service uses appropriations from sources that include
its national forest system, capital improvement and maintenance, and
wildland fire management accounts, as well as the Knudsen-Vandenburg
fund and the reforestation trust fund. GAO is exploring with the
Department of Agriculture the availability of these appropriations for
this purpose.
[5] The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness as areas of
undeveloped federal land retaining their primeval character, without
permanent improvements or human habitation. The act provided that
wilderness areas would be designated by Congress and directed federal
agencies to protect and manage such lands to preserve their natural
condition. The act generally prohibits road construction and the use of
motorized equipment within wilderness areas. The Roadless Area
Conservation Rule, issued by the Forest Service in 2001 and in effect
during most of the period we reviewed, generally prohibited road
building, timber cutting, and certain other activities in inventoried
roadless areas, which are roadless areas identified in a series of
analyses conducted prior to the 2001 rule. A new roadless rule, issued
in 2005, does not include the same prohibitions as the earlier rule,
but forest plans may still restrict activities in roadless areas.
[6] Because the Forest Service's Alaska, Southern, and Eastern regions
do very little, if any, postfire rehabilitation and restoration, they
do not have formal processes for prioritizing and funding projects.
[7] In the Northern region, rather than submitting project proposals,
forests are directed to input project needs and funding requests into
the National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System, a national fire
management database. Regional officials then query the database to
assess total regional needs and select projects for funding.
[8] In 1980, Congress created the reforestation trust fund by directing
a portion of tariffs on imported wood products to provide dedicated
funding for reforestation and related treatments. The roads and trails
fund, established in 1913, authorizes use of a portion of Forest
Service receipts (for example from the sale of timber and grazing
permits, and the collection of recreation fees) for the construction
and maintenance of roads and trails.
[9] In fiscal years 2004 and 2005, monitoring of both emergency
stabilization and rehabilitation projects was paid for through the
emergency stabilization program, using fire suppression funds. In
fiscal year 2006, BLM began to use rehabilitation funds to pay for
monitoring rehabilitation projects.
[10] U.S. Forest Service Interregional Ecosystem Management
Coordination Group, "A Strategy for Post-Fire Recovery" (Dec. 3, 2004).
[11] The National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System is an
interagency system designed to assist field personnel in managing and
reporting accomplishments for work conducted under the National Fire
Plan, including hazardous fuels, rehabilitation, and restoration
activities. Planned and completed activities may be entered into the
system with funding sources.
[12] Because Forest Service regions independently developed
prioritization criteria, the regions have different categories, as well
as a different ordering of the categories, and they are not directly
comparable.
[13] Each year, BLM publishes a Public Lands Statistics report. In this
report, BLM reports rehabilitation accomplishments combined with
emergency stabilization accomplishments.
[14] Although the Forest Service transferred funds from various
programs to help pay for fire suppression in fiscal years 2002 and
2003, agency officials said they did not need to do so in fiscal year
2004 or 2005. Furthermore, in the Consolidated Appropriations Act for
Fiscal Year 2005, Congress appropriated an additional $400 million to
the Forest Service as a supplemental appropriation for urgent fire
suppression needs--which can be carried over from one year to the next
if unspent--to help address suppression needs in unusually costly years
and avoid the need to transfer funds from other land management
accounts. For more information, see GAO, Wildfire Suppression: Funding
Transfers Cause Project Cancellations and Delays, Strained
Relationships, and Management Disruptions, GAO-04-612 (Washington,
D.C.: June 2, 2004).
[15] U.S. Forest Service Interregional Ecosystem Management
Coordination Group, "A Strategy for Post-Fire Recovery" (2004).
[16] J. Sessions, R. Buckman, M. Newton, and J. Hamann, "The Biscuit
Fire: Management Options for Forest Regeneration, Fire and Insect Risk
Reduction and Timber Salvage" (unpublished report, College of Forestry,
Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, 2003).
[17] D.C. Donato, J.B. Fontaine, J.L. Campbell, W.D. Robinson, J.B.
Kauffman, and B.E. Law, "Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and
Increases Fire Risk," Science, vol. 311 (2006).
[18] For example, the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act, H.R.
4200, 109th Cong. (2005), and the National Forest Rehabilitation and
Recovery Act, H.R. 3973, 109th Cong. (2005).
[19] BLM Idaho State Office, ID Technical Bulletin No. 2004-01:
Establishment of Aerially Seeded Big Sagebrush Following Southern Idaho
Wildfires (August 2004).
[20] GAO, Wildland Fires: Better Information Needed on Effectiveness of
Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation Treatments, GAO-03-430
(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 4, 2003).
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