Analysis of Forest Service Wildland Fire Management Expenditures: An Update

Soaring expenditures for fire management in the USDA Forest Service have caused substantial concern over fire management costs, especially in light of questions about the role of fire in ecosystems. This report contains analysis of most Forest Service fire management expenditures between fiscal years 1970-98. Expenditure information was obtained from a variety of sources, including electronic files from the National Finance Center, hardcopy information from archived records, and data developed by regional fire and accounting personnel. Results identified statistically significant trends in increased total fire management expenditures, in both nominal and real dollars, with or without the fiscal year 1994, the record expenditure year. When expressed in constant 1998 dollars, fire preparedness expenditures showed a statistically significant compound growth rate of 3.4 percent annually, while no trend could be discerned for fire operations expenditures. Similarly, no statistical trend in annual fuel treatment expenditures could be detected over the fiscal years 1970-98 period, although a statistically significant compound growth rate of 20.1 percent annually was found for the 1990's. Fire prevention and control have always been important to the mystique of forestry and the USDA Forest Service. Everyone knows of Smokey Bear and envisions smokejumpers parachuting to fires. But more recently, questions have been raised about the role of fire in ecosystems and the enormous costs of fire control. Seemingly, the costs of control are out of control. Expenditures in fiscal year (FY) 1994 caused considerable concern. In FY 1994, the expenditures for Forest Service fire management reached a record-breaking total of nearly $1 billion. Because of these soaring expenditures for fire management, and the recommendations of the Strategic Assessment of Fire Management report (USDA Forest Service 1995) to address them, the Fire Economics Assessment Team was chartered by Forest Service, Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) staff in 1995. The Team was charged to review current fire management expenditures and their trends and identify opportunities to reduce them. The Team's report was submitted during September 1995 (Bell and others 1995) and later published in an abbreviated format (Schuster and others 1997). This paper summarizes some of the Fire Economics Assessment Team's fire expenditure information, which has been updated to include expenditures from the FY 1998 fire season. Methods This assessment focused on fire management expenditures under the control of the Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) staff in Washington, D.C. (WO) within the Forest Service. These expenditures are an understatement of total fire management expenditures on National Forests or for the Forest Service for two main reasons. First, FAM is not the only area within the Forest Service performing fire management activities. For example, timber managers conduct fuels improvement by using brush-disposal funds collected from timber sales. Second, agencies other than the Forest Service fight fires on National Forests, for which partial or no reimbursement is made. For example, when military personnel fight fire on National Forests, the Forest Service reimburses for expenditures above basic expenses only. When a USDI agency, such as the Bureau of Land USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-173. 1999. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the Symposium on Fire Economics, Policy and Planning: Bottom Lines, April 5-9, 1999, San Diego, California. Project Leader, Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service, P.O. Box 8089, Missoula, MT 59807. e-mail: eschuster/ [email protected]