Current Federal Action to Combat Wildfires Discussed During House Hearing

October 13, 2020

Over seven million acres of land have burned in the United States so far this year, causing incalculable damage to ecosystems and communities as homes are destroyed and lives are lost. Damage from fires can also have far-reaching effects, as demonstrated in September when the skies of Washington, D.C. were darkened for days by air particles from fires thousands of miles away on the West coast.

John Phipps, Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry - U.S. Forest Service

On September 24, the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture’s Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee held a hearing to discuss the federal role responding to and recovering from the 2020 wildfires. John Phipps, the U.S. Forest Service’s Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry, was the hearing’s sole witness.

Severe wildfires have been an escalating problem in the U.S. for decades; since 2000 an average of 71,300 wildfires burned an average of 6.9 million acres every year, up from an average of 3.3 million acres in the 1990s. While climate change is a contributing factor in fire frequency and severity, Subcommittee Char Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) noted in her opening remarks that other factors, such as “encroachment of housing and development on forested wildlands; forest management decisions and resources; fire management; weather events...[and] actions of people” also play a significant role in accelerating fire risk.

The 2020 fire season has posed unique challenges as multiple large wildfires burned simultaneously, straining resources that could normally be spread out throughout the year. Phipps characterized the 2020 wildfire season as an “extraordinary year, ” and explained, “the system was not designed for it; it broke the system to try to respond to that amount of fire all at the same time.”

Phipps described the current personnel response to the fires, noting that over 32,700 interagency firefighters were currently deployed in wildfire response--a record high. Over 400 soldiers from the Army and Marine Corps were also on the ground, including four military aircraft equipped to fight fires. Additionally, over 500 Canadian and 100 Mexican firefighting personnel were working in the United States in September to control wildfires, thanks to reciprocal agreements established under the Wildfire Suppression Assistance Act (P.L. 100-428).

Along with workers directly involved in fire suppression, there are 20 Air Resource Advisors located near active fires charged with creating regular Smoke Outlook reports to inform communities of changes in air quality and fire risks. The Environmental Protection Agency keeps these updates, along with data collected from mechanical sensors, on the AirNow.gov platform.

While suppression is the priority in areas currently most affected by fires, Phipps emphasized the importance of active forest management to prevent such “megafires” or “landscape-scale fires” to begin with. Before the American settlement of California, the average Californian forest had 64 trees per acre; today the average is 320. Phipps attributed this 500-fold increase in forest density to the active suppression of smaller wildfires, a trend which could be reversed through prescribed burns, or fires that are set on purpose during a time when they can be controlled by natural resource managers. The practice of prescribed forest burning is not new--native peoples have been using low-grade fires to manage the landscape for generations.

One reason federal and state forest managers have struggled to implement prescribed burns, or allow small-scale fire to burn naturally, is because of pushback from nearby communities-- particularly complaints of air quality issues. Phipps noted, however, that prescribed burns impact air quality less than the out-of-control wildfires that can result from poor forest management, saying “the scientific literature indicates that prescribed fire smoke, particularly given its more on our terms, is much more benign than fire at the worst time of the year, in the summer."

Land management agencies have had greater capacity to undertake active forest management thanks to the 2018 Omnibus Spending Package, which included $2.25 billion in new budget authority for the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Interior to fight fires. The “wildfire funding fix,” as it became known, effectively ended the decades-old practice of agencies transferring money intended for other activities, such as forest maintenance, to fight fires. Phipps said of the funding fix, “I think it's an understatement to say it's one of the best things that we received, it really helped stabilize the Forest Service...and that's allowing us to better plan for a lot of things, including focusing on treatments and implementing them.”

Moving forward, Phipps recommended a landscape-level approach to fire management, with closer coordination between federal, state, tribal, and local governments, along with the private sector to manage excess vegetation and implement prescribed burns. Executive Order 13855, issued in 2018, was a move towards this more integrated approach, setting vegetation reduction targets in federal forestland and encouraging more cross-jurisdictional collaboration. While these recent federal actions have been helpful, Phipps predicted that it will take at least 10 years to undo 110 years of unsound forest management practices.

The message of enhanced fire management resonated with the members of the subcommittee. Ranking member Doug LaMalfa (R-Cali.) closed the hearing by summarizing, “We've talked about 110 years of putting the fire out, without doing the other half of the equation that nature used to do...if we have the hybrid of mankind helping out using nature's tools, using what the Native Americans used to use, we can have a winning equation here, and that's what we really need--that's what the public demands, and that's what they cry out for.”

Author: Amber Todoroff