Washington, DC (February 8, 2005) - At a time when record drought continues to plague most of the western United States, the Administration has failed to request adequate funding to help make many communities safer from wildfire in its budget proposal. The FY 2006 Forest Service budget request for the National Fire Plan fails to dedicate adequate funding to community wildfire assistance. That portion of the budget is slated to make up only 4 percent of the fire plan budget, a decrease of nearly 30 percent from last year’s funding.
Preliminary findings of a soon-to-be released report by The Wilderness Society show that programs funding true community assistance efforts remain under-funded in the National Fire Plan, severely limiting the extent to which many communities are really able to prepare for fire.
“Protecting lives and property should be a top priority for the Administration. With 85 percent of the lands at risk from wildfire being non-federal, a much larger portion of funding should be directed to state, tribal and local governments to focus on land in and immediately adjacent to communities, where it would do the most good,” said Bo Wilmer, landscape scientist at The Wilderness Society.
According to The Wilderness Society report, “Following the Money,” since 2001 an average of only 7.8 percent of total fire appropriations has been dedicated to funding vital state and community programs.
The “Healthy Forests Initiative” budget released last week also does not adequately target funding for community protection efforts.
The administration earlier announced that they would be adding $56 million to funding for the Healthy Forests Initiative and claimed they would provide $867 million for reducing the threat of wildfire. However, a closer look reveals that $492 million from the Forest Service’s and Department of Interior’s wildland fire budgets would go toward hazardous fuel reduction and $375 million is funding from other programs such as forest products, forest management, vegetation and watershed, wildlife and fish, and rangeland management. It is unclear whether the majority of the $492 million will be targeted toward effective community protection efforts.
There is no Healthy Forests Initiative line item in the Forest Service or Department of Interior budget. The administration has arrived at the $867 million by referring to money from other existing programs as “Healthy Forests” funding.
“The Forest Service is attributing money from other programs and counting it as strictly Healthy Forests Initiative dollars,” said Carolyn Alkire, resource economist for The Wilderness Society. “In fact, the administration is claiming $120 million for Forest Management and Forest Products – a portion of which goes to commercial logging, which can harm water quality, decrease recreational opportunities, and increase fire risks.”
“It doesn’t really matter how much money is available if the money isn’t being spent effectively,” said Michael Francis, National Forest program director at The Wilderness Society. “The truly important question the American people are asking is whether or not the money is being spent to protect their homes and communities. In the case of this budget proposal, the answer is no.”
For More Information
