Earth Equity News

U.S. Forest Service Now Spends 49% of Budget Combating Fires. By Dina Fine Maron, ClimateWire, August 9, 2010. "Dave Cleaves is charged with charting the course for the Forest Service's response to climate change, helping America's forests and grasslands cope with ongoing threats exacerbated by global warming -- wildfires, diseases and pests. In five months on the job, he has laid out the broad strokes for the agency's next phase in its climate change response. He is only the second climate change adviser for the century-old agency, and he is the first to take the reins during the Obama administration... As forest ecosystems climb northward, for example, deciding what strain of tree to plant in an area wiped out by wildfires is not just a simple matter of planting what lived there before. A hundred years from now, that area's landscape could look completely different. That, Cleaves admitted, is 'daunting.'

"Though firefighting activities required just a 13% slice of the Forest Service's budget in 1991, they now engulf almost half of the agency's budget. For fiscal 2011, the Obama administration requested $5.38 billion for all the Forest Service's activities, about 49% of which would be earmarked for wildland fire activities. In a sense, the agency's main problem is burning through its money. Urban sprawl, in particular, has fueled the bloated firefighting budget, since beating back fires near homes requires more pricey maneuvering. Meanwhile, the agency's earlier fire suppression policies, drought and the millions of acres of dead trees left in the wake of warm temperature-loving bark beetles also set the stage for more frequent and intense burns. And hotter fires from abundant fuel are scorching soils, which may fundamentally change the landscape."