Forest Service chief: ‘We’re going to need to act’ to address Western wildfires

WASHINGTON — Rod Haeberle, an Okanogan County rancher, said as he sees it, there are three choices for land in danger of wildfire: “Log it, graze it or watch it burn.”

“Watch it burn, we have,” Haeberle said Thursday during a meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Agriculture Committee.

Poor forest conditions leave areas prone to disease and wildfire, he said, which results in more severe fire seasons.

But this year, as it has eight times in the last 13 years, the Forest Service was forced to borrow from its thinning and forest-preservation programs to pay for firefighting.

“Dollars taken from non-fire programs put in jeopardy the very programs that reduce the threat of catastrophic fires,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said at the hearing.

Though the $700 million the agency transferred this summer was eventually reimbursed in the budget bill passed last week, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said the borrowing is disruptive to the planning and execution of programs.

From 2003 to 2015, the Forest Service’s fire suppression costs went up $740 million , but the agency’s budget doesn’t reflect the increase, Tidwell said.

Left unchanged, the Forest Service expects 67 percent of its budget in 2025 to go toward fighting wildfires. The agency is tasked with managing federal forests along with the Interior Department.

“The most important action Congress can make now in advancing the pace and scale of forest restoration is to fix the fire funding problem,” Tidwell said.

A bill introduced in both chambers of Congress would allow emergency funds to be provided during the most severe fire seasons. This would treat the fires similarly to major hurricanes and tornadoes, said Christopher Topik, of the Nature Conservancy.

The Obama administration and all Washington and Idaho House representatives support the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. In the Senate, both Idaho senators and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., are co-sponsoring an identical bill.

Another bill, the Resilient Federal Forests Act, would create a new disaster fund within the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It passed the House earlier this year but remains stalled in the Senate.

Said Tidwell, “We can change the consequences. We can change the level of fire severity. We can change the risk to our homes and our firefighters. But we’re going to need to act.”

Kevin Graeler, a student in the University of Missouri Washington, D.C., Reporting Program, works as a correspondent for The Spokesman-Review.