WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Group Calls for More Fire Use in the Southwest - WildEarth Guardians' review of US Forest Service fire use in the southwest find

Where wildland fire use has been authorized and there is no threat to life or property, the Forest Service must allow fire to do its job. We can't ignore the most environmentally beneficial and cost-efficient way of restoring the health of our forests.
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

Santa Fe, NM -A comprehensive review of the Fire Management Plans and fuel management practices of the Forest Service in the Southwest by WildEarth Guardians uncovered rampant failure to carry out plans and a massive price tag for near total fire suppression in recent years. The report, entitled Born of Fire, finds the agency spent as much as $146 million and an average of $99 million per year since 2001 to suppress 98% of wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico. Despite agency Fire Management Plans calling for the use of wildland fire as a management tool under appropriate conditions, only two of eleven forests have ever done so. Just three of eleven fire management plans even consider the use of wildland fire outside of designated Wilderness.

“Although the agency has developed consistent fire plans that do consider wildland fire use, nearly every forest is failing to use fire as a tool and still spends hundreds of millions of dollars on unnecessary fire suppression and needless forest thinning: wasting tax dollars, ignoring science and promoting unhealthy forests,” said Bryan Bird, ecologist with WildEarth Guardians. “The Forest Service needs to get serious about fire as a cost efficient and ecologically superior management tool.”

The National Fire Plan provides government direction for fire management through the mandatory establishment of Fire Management Plans (FMPs) for every burnable acre of vegetation on public lands. FMPs are one of the most important components of fire management activities on the ground and direct how the restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems will be accomplished, provide guidance on reducing the impacts of fire suppression, encourage collaboration between land management agencies, delineate specific performance measures, provide for monitoring and incorporate the “best available science.”

“These fire management plans are worthless if the Forest Service isn’t going to follow them,” said Bird. “Where wildland fire use has been authorized and there is no threat to life or property, the Forest Service must allow fire to do its job. We can’t keep spending millions of dollars ignoring the most environmentally beneficial and cost-efficient way of restoring the health of our forests.”

WildEarth Guardians conducted a comprehensive review of the Forest Service’s FMPs in the Southwest as well as records of fuels management and fire suppression costs since 2001. Though the FMPs are a considerable improvement on the haphazard fire management of the past, they are not consistent in their direction for the use of fire as a management tool and the forests have failed to actually use fire on the ground, outside of the Gila and Kaibab National Forests. The Gila received the highest grade of 83% an A and the Tonto the lowest of 47% an F.

"Forest Guardian's new report on fire management in the Southwest is extremely timely,” said Tom Ribe, former fire fighter and Southwestern Representative for FUSEE (Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology). “The report is a visionary, intellectually honest report which deals with the need to reinvent fire management to save the public money, help restore our forests and grasslands, and stop the vicious cycle of fire suppression and the resulting catastrophic build-up of fuels. I hope this report will help spur needed policy changes across the region and soon."

The report found that the Southwestern Region spent approximately $36 million in 2003 and $28 million in 2004 on mechanical fuels treatments, even though prescribed burning is 20 times more cost efficient. Eight recommendations are presented in Born of Fire for improving the FMPs as well as increasing the use of fire for fuel management in the region