Columnists

Wildfire protection is needed

Entering the final month of an intense wildfire season that has set the American West ablaze, with more than 17,000 wildfires across 2.3 million acres, Congress must recognize that its model for wildfire suppression is broken.

By failing to provide an emergency funding source for federal firefighting efforts, Congress has forced the U.S. Forest Service to pay for its firefighting efforts by cannibalizing programs that promote healthy forests and wildfire prevention.

This self-defeating cycle ensures that the worse wildfires become, the less money the federal government can spend on maintaining healthy, fire-resistant forests. But investments in prevention result in a far smaller cost in human suffering, habitat loss, forest destruction, greenhouse-gas emissions and tax dollars than the billions spent each year fighting megafires.

As Washington state's commissioner of public lands, I lead more than 1,000 firefighters who defend roughly 13 million acres of public and private land from wildfires. We are still working with our state and federal partners to completely extinguish the largest wildfire in the history of Washington, the Carlton Complex, which has burned more than 400 square miles of Okanogan and Chelan Counties since July 14, while confronting many new wildfires daily.

The towering, unpredictable and fast-moving Carlton Complex fire was unlike anything I had ever seen in more than four decades of firefighting experience.

On the night of July 17, a sudden change in wind stoked a firestorm that threatened to incinerate more than a half-dozen rural communities. As families fled, they drove through smothering smoke on roads bathed in a golden glow by the approaching fire. By morning, more than 300 homes had been lost and large areas of the town of Pateros were a smoking ruin.

Despite the scale of disasters such as the Carlton Complex, Congress still pays for federal wildland firefighting as though it were lawn mowing or picnic-table painting. Several bipartisan legislative proposals would instead allow the Forest Service to tap into the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster fund to fight wildfires, as the federal government does when responding to other natural disasters.

States have had success using science-based forest management strategies that reduce fire risk by removing dead or dying trees, thinning overstocked stands that are susceptible to fire and disease, and regenerating new forests that are more healthy and fire-resistant. The Forest Service understands the benefits of these treatments, but Congress has not sufficiently funded them.

Congress should provide emergency funding to fight wildfires while greatly increasing the budget for stewardship of America's shamefully neglected national forests--before more people, communities and wildlife suffer needless harm.

Editorial on 08/31/2014

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