Federal fire managers, tangled up in bureaucracy, are letting the states down

When I worked for the Bureau of Land Management as a first responder firefighter, as I did during my college summer break, you learned pretty quickly how to properly move the hose to quickly combat the flames. During my last summer, our locomotive was crewed by a firefighter whose only experience was digging lines and not moving water. One night we tried to quickly catch a growing forest fire, but our new crewmate kept getting tangled in the hose.

Federal forest managers appear to be trapped in their own hose reel as they try to manage escalating fire risks. Federal forest managers, swamped with too much federal land, overburdened with bureaucracy and relying heavily on remote monitoring, are failing to adequately combat their wildfires. Three Idaho congressmen, Rep. Russ Fulcher and Senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, recently wrote to U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore saying, “The scope and severity of these incidents are due to inadequate federal prevention efforts and delayed response times attributable.” .”

In Idaho’s Boise and Payette National Forests, the Lava Fire continues to consume valuable public timber resources, totaling nearly 100,000 acres of federal and state land. Even as fire season draws to a close, nearby complex fires are still exacerbating the situation, even though containment has increased. As of September, the state faced an estimated $45.8 million bill for wildfires in 2024 (excluding the most recent fires in October), compared to $14.6 million in 2023.

Part of this increased spending is due to large federal fires that were not immediately contained and developed into large, complex fires. Idaho Gov. Brad Little said, “They (the federal government) need to do more containment and more management.” The Idaho Legislature must decide next session whether to pre-fund the fire emergency fund. If the Legislature chooses not to increase funding, the Idaho Department of Lands will have to wait until 2026 for a supplemental request.

Defenders of the federal government’s role as public land stewards need only look at the Congressional Budget Office’s findings to see that they are mismanaging our forest resources. Less than a third of fires occur on federal lands, but these grow hotter and larger than five times the average size of non-federal fires. Slow containment, poorly managed and unhealthy forests, and excessive land areas are overwhelming federal administrators, and Western states continue to suffer the consequences.

First, federal officials must prioritize rapid containment, and that can only be achieved if personnel and experience match the need. In July, federal wildfire managers increased to preparedness level 5, meaning “all hands on deck.” However, local reports indicated that there were not enough workers to meet demand (although the 101 percent hiring target was finally reached in July). As of July 26, 2,417 requests for necessary fire department resources remained unanswered statewide and there was a significant shortage of experienced firefighters.

Over the past three years, the U.S. Forest Service has lost 45 percent of its permanent employees, meaning those positions are being filled by firefighters with less experience. A firefighter who worked on the fires in Idaho’s Boise National Forest said, “There weren’t enough firefighters to fill the crews to catch them all.” The new fires are all big now, too, but hardly anyone is there.”

Second, underutilized and poorly managed forests dominate federal lands in the West, accompanied by excessive and obligatory bureaucratic burdens for project initiation. Federal administrators must use the best available science to address excessive fuel burdens and expedite management projects.

Harvesting is a tool in which states excel far beyond any federal program. For every dollar spent on federal land, the payback is 73 cents, but states earn $14.51 per dollar spent, with the land base being much smaller. Not to mention that new tree growth accounts for less than half the number of trees that die each year and that harvesting accounts for only 11 percent of tree mortality; The rest is attributed to disease and fires. Allowing federal forests to rot or burn is an economic waste and an even greater environmental tragedy.

Finally, the federal government is overburdened with western land that remains unused and uncultivated. The federal government owns 45 percent of the land in the bottom 11 contiguous western states, as opposed to 4 percent in the eastern states. Utah’s recent lawsuit against the federal government’s hoarding of unappropriated federal lands is a positive assertion that western lands need the influence of state management and resources, not outsource them to bureaucratic management on the East Coast.

State officials have demonstrated their superior protection of our forest and wildland resources while the federal government remains embroiled in its own hose reel. The fires will continue to burn out of control unless the federal government learns from the western states how to properly manage the western land with sufficient and experienced personal, efficient and scientific forest management practices and ultimately the land to the citizens and communities who live there , reappropriated Work near these resources.

Madi Clark is a policy analyst for the Mountain States Policy Center, an independent market research organization based in Idaho. She served as a wildland firefighter from 2008 to 2011. This comment originally appeared in the Idaho Capital SunPart of the States Newsroom network. Read the original Here.

Govern’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Govern’s editors or management.