Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but  
Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy (14-JAN-05,  
GAO-05-147).							 
                                                                 
Over the past two decades, the number of acres burned by wildland
fires has surged, often threatening human lives, property, and	 
ecosystems. Past management practices, including a concerted	 
federal policy in the 20th century of suppressing fires to	 
protect communities and ecosystem resources, unintentionally	 
resulted in steady accumulation of dense vegetation that fuels	 
large, intense, wildland fires. While such fires are normal in	 
some ecosystems, in others they can cause catastrophic damage to 
resources as well as to communities near wildlands known as the  
wildland-urban interface. In 1999, GAO recommended that the	 
Forest Service develop a cohesive strategy for responding to	 
wildland fire threats. As a follow-up, 5 years later, GAO was	 
asked to identify the (1) progress the federal government has	 
made in responding to wildland fire threats and (2) challenges it
will need to address within the next 5 years.			 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-05-147 					        
    ACCNO:   A15497						        
  TITLE:     Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been    
Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy	 
     DATE:   01/14/2005 
  SUBJECT:   Forest management					 
	     Wilderness areas					 
	     Strategic planning 				 
	     Federal funds					 
	     Land management					 
	     Data integrity					 
	     Interagency relations				 
	     Wildland fires					 
	     National Fire Plan 				 

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GAO-05-147

Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health,
Committee on Resources, House of Representatives

January 2005

WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT

Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a
Cohesive Strategy

Contents

Table

Figure

Abbreviations

January 14, 2005Letter

The Honorable Greg Walden Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest
Health Committee on Resources House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Chairman:

The national trend in recent years of increasing wildland fire threats to
communities and ecosystems has been continuing. The average number of
acres burned by wildland fires annually from 2000 through 2003 was 56
percent greater than the average amount burned annually during the 1990s.
While an increase in wildland fires may often be necessary to restore
ecosystems, some fires also can cause catastrophic damages to communities
and ecosystems. Experts believe that catastrophic damages from wildland
fires likely will continue to increase until an adequate long-term federal
response, coordinated with others, is implemented and has had time to take
effect. In this context, you asked us to report on the progress that the
federal government has made over the last 5 years and the key challenges
it faces in developing and implementing a response to wildland fire
problems.

This report is primarily based on over 25 reviews dealing with federal
wildland fire issues that we have conducted in recent years. (App. I lists
our reports and testimonies on these reviews.) These reviews focused
largely on the activities of the Forest Service in the Department of
Agriculture and the land management agencies in the Department of the
Interior,  which together manage over 95 percent of all federal lands.1 We
also interviewed officials and obtained data from the Forest Service,
Interior, Congressional Research Service, Brookings Institution, and
National Academy of Public Administration. Appendix II contains a more
complete description of our methodology. We conducted our work between May
and November 2004 in accordance with generally accepted government
auditing standards.

Results in Brief

In the past 5 years, the federal government has made important progress in
putting into place the basic components of a framework for managing and
responding to the nation's wildland fire problems, including

o establishing a priority to protect communities near wildlands-the
wildland-urban interface;

o increasing the amount of effort and funds available for addressing
wildland fire issues, such as fuel reduction on federal lands;

o improving data and research on wildland fire, local fire management
plans, interagency coordination, and collaboration with nonfederal
partners; and

o refining its performance measures and results monitoring for wildland
fire management.

While the federal government has made important progress to date, many
challenges lie ahead for addressing the wildland fire problem in a timely
and effective manner. Most notably, the land management agencies need to
complete and refine a cohesive strategy that identifies the long-term
options and related funding needed to reduce fuels and respond to the
nation's wildland fire problems. The agencies and the Congress need such a
strategy to help make decisions about an effective and affordable
long-term approach for addressing problems that have been decades in the
making and will take decades more to resolve. However, to complete and
begin implementing such a strategy, the agencies must complete several
tasks, each with its own challenges, including

o finishing data systems needed to identify the extent, severity, and
location of wildland fire threats to our national forests and rangelands;

o updating local fire management plans to better specify the actions
needed to effectively address these threats; and

o identifying long-term implementation options and related funding needed
to respond to the wildland fire problems.

Recently, the land management agencies initiated a new wildland fire
strategic planning effort that might provide a useful framework for
developing a cohesive strategy that includes long-term options and related
funding needed to reduce and maintain fuels at acceptable levels and
respond to the nation's wildland fire problems.

We are recommending that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior
provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of the agencies'
fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management budgets, with a joint tactical
plan outlining the critical steps the agencies will take, together with
related time frames, to complete a cohesive strategy that identifies
long-term options and needed funding for reducing and maintaining fuels at
acceptable levels and responding to the nation's wildland fire problems.
In responding to a draft of this report, the Forest Service, commenting on
behalf of Agriculture, and Interior generally agreed with our findings and
recommendation. However, both departments expressed concern about their
ability to provide the recommended joint tactical plan in time for the
Congress's consideration of their fiscal year 2006 budget requests. The
Forest Service's and Interior's comment letters are included in appendixes
III and IV, respectively.

Background

Wildland fire triggered by lightning is a natural, inevitable, and
necessary ecological process. Such fires periodically consume excess
vegetation and renew the productivity of our nation's ecosystems. However,
in ecosystems that are adapted to frequent small, low-intensity fires,
uncharacteristically large and intense wildland fires increasingly
threaten catastrophic damage to such ecosystems. Large intense fires in
these and other ecosystems also increasingly threaten human lives, health,
property, and infrastructure in the wildland-urban interface.

Uncharacteristically large, intense fires often are fueled by abnormally
dense accumulations of vegetation in many forest and rangeland ecosystems.
This excess vegetation is the result of several human land use and
management practices, including several decades of effective fire
suppression activities that have reduced the normal frequency of wildland
fires that nature had periodically used to clear undergrowth and small
trees. This vegetation, in turn, provides abnormally large amounts of fuel
for fires, causing some to spread more rapidly, burn larger areas, and
burn more intensely than normal. Such uncharacteristic fires are more
common in warmer, drier climates such as the interior western United
States and during periods of drought. Federal researchers estimate that
these vegetative conditions exist on approximately 190 million acres (or
more than 40 percent) of federal lands in the contiguous  United States,
but could vary from 90 million to 200 million acres, and that these
conditions also exist on many nonfederal lands.

Wildland Fire Has Continued to Increase in Recent Years

The acreage burned by wildland fire-after having declined nationally
throughout most of the 20th century due to land management practices,
including fire suppression-increased in the latter decades of the century.
This increase was the result of more large fires, most of which were
located in the inland western United States, where many of the forests
historically had frequent, smaller, and less intense fires.  The trend
toward increased acreage burned by wildland fire  has continued into the
21st century  as  illustrated in figure 1. For 2000 through 2003,  the
average number of acres burned annually on all lands nationally was 56
percent greater than the average acres burned annually during the 1990s.

Figure 1: Average Number of Acres Burned Annually by Wildland Fire in Each
Decade Since 1970 

Increases in Wildland Fire Exposed Weaknesses in the Federal Response

Our reviews over the last 5 years identified several weaknesses in the
federal government's management response to wildland fire. Specifically,
we found that the land management agencies lacked an effective national
strategy to respond to wildland fire, had shortcomings in addressing
wildland fire issues at the local level, and had an ineffective system for
accounting for wildland fire management efforts and monitoring results.

We noted in a 1999 report that the federal government lacked a national
strategy for reducing excessive national forest fuel levels and associated
catastrophic wildland fires.2 Such a strategy was needed by the agencies
to address numerous policy, programmatic, and budgetary factors that
presented significant barriers to accomplishing fuel reduction goals.
Among these barriers were program incentives that tended to focus on areas
that may not present the greatest wildland fire hazards and very high
costs for removing hazardous fuels. We also reported in 2003 that the
Forest Service and Interior had issued national guidance on fuel
reduction, but it was not specific enough for prioritizing fuels reduction
projects.3 Lacking such guidance, agencies could not ensure that local
land management units were implementing the highest-priority fuels
reduction projects nationwide.

Our reviews also found shortcomings in the federal government's
implementation at the local level of various wildland fire management
activities, such as preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation.4 Over
half of all local federal land management units had no fire management
plans that met the requirements of the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire
Management Policy. This national policy, jointly adopted by Agriculture
and Interior and updated in 2001, established a goal to restore fire's
natural role in ecosystems consistent with human health and safety. The
fire management plans are intended to help ensure the effective
integration of local wildland fire management activities with planned uses
of agencies' lands so that unwanted wildland fire does not impair
accomplishment of desired future conditions on these lands. The Forest
Service and Interior also lacked basic data, such as the amount and
location of lands needing fuel reduction, and research on the
effectiveness of different fuel reduction methods on which to base their
fire management plans and specific project decisions. Furthermore,
coordination among federal agencies and collaboration of these agencies
with nonfederal entities were ineffective. Such coordination and
collaboration are needed because wildland fire is a shared problem that
transcends land ownership and administrative boundaries, requiring
cooperation among all parties.5

Finally, we found that better accountability in federal wildland fire
management efforts was needed. Although the agencies had begun developing
results-oriented performance measures to assess the effectiveness of
treatments in reducing the risk of catastrophic wildland fires, they had
no baseline from which to assess program performance. They also could not
establish any meaningful performance measure and goal for reducing fuels
because they lacked sufficient data on the location of lands at high risk
of catastrophic fires as well as data on the cost-effectiveness of fuel
reduction methods and their effects on other ecosystem resources. In
particular, the agencies needed to develop performance measures that would
focus their actions on reducing priority hazards and to better monitor the
results of those actions.6

Important Progress Has Been Made in Addressing Federal Wildland Fire
Management Problems over the Last 5 Years

The federal government has made important progress over the last 5 years
in improving its management of wildland fire. Nationally, it has worked to
formulate a comprehensive strategy, established a priority to protect
communities in the wildland-urban interface, and increased funding for
wildland fire management activities, including fuels reduction and
suppression. At the local level, it enhanced its data and research on
wildland fire problems, made significant progress in developing local fire
management plans, and improved coordination among federal agencies and
collaboration with nonfederal partners. In addition, it strengthened its
overall accountability for investments in wildland fire activities by
establishing more meaningful goals and performance measures.

Progress in National Strategy: Priorities Have Been Clarified and Funding
Has Been Increased for Identified Needs

Over the last 5 years, the federal government has been formulating a
strategy known as the National Fire Plan, clarifying its priorities and
increasing funding for wildland fire management activities. The National
Fire Plan is not a single document. Rather, it is composed of several
strategic documents that set forth a priority to reduce wildland fire
risks to communities.7 To address this priority, the agencies, working
with the states, identified a list of communities nationwide that are
considered most at risk of wildland fire damage. While the recently
enacted Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 addresses risks to both
communities and ecosystems, it emphasizes a priority for protecting
wildland-urban interface communities by directing that at least 50 percent
of funding for fuel reduction projects authorized under the act be
allocated to wildland-urban interface areas.8 Although we have raised
concerns about how the agencies have defined these interface areas, the
accuracy and process they used in designating these communities and
wildland-urban interface areas, and the specificity of their
prioritization guidance, the act's clarification of the priority for
protecting communities provides a starting point for identifying and
prioritizing funding needs.9

Forest Service and Interior appropriations for fuel reductions, as well as
for other wildland fire management activities such as preparedness and
suppression, have increased substantially over the past 5 years. In 1999,
the Forest Service had not requested increased funding to meet the growing
fuel reduction needs it had identified.10 As shown in table 1, overall
appropriations for wildland fire management activities for both the Forest
Service and Interior have nearly tripled in the past 5 years, from about
$1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to over $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2004.
While these increases include significant amounts for unanticipated
suppression costs and preparedness funding, fuel reduction funding has
quadrupled since 1999.

Table 1: Appropriations to Wildland Fire Management Accounts, Fiscal Years
1999 through 2005 (million of dollars)

                 Fiscal  
                 years   
                    1999     2000     2001     2002     2003 2004(enacted)        2005 
                                                                           (requested) 
Fuel reduction     $98.8   $117.0   $400.1   $395.2   $422.3        $442.2      $475.5 
Preparedness       522.7    561.3    887.9    875.7    867.2         925.8       920.9 
Suppression        276.8    297.3    472.4    382.7    577.3           790       906.9 
Emergency funds    152.0    590.0    624.6    320.0   1114.0         397.6         0.0 
Site                 0.0     20.0    246.6     82.7     26.9          31.1        27.3 
rehabilitation                                                             
Nonfederal land      0.0      0.0    118.5     87.1     89.3          69.1        47.2 
protection                                                                 
Other fire                                                                             
management           9.0     13.3    109.8     95.4     68.1          74.7        60.4
appropriationsa                                                            
Totalb          $1,059.3 $1,598.9 $2,859.9 $2,238.8 $3,165.1      $2,730.6    $2,438.2 

Source: Congressional Research Service.

aIncludes appropriations for research, fire facilities, and forest health.

bFigures may not add because of rounding.

Additionally, through the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, the
Congress authorized $760 million per year to be appropriated for hazardous
fuels reduction activities, including projects for reducing fuels on up to
20 million acres of land.

Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research, Fire Management
Planning, and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been Strengthened

The federal government also has improved the implementation of its
wildland fire management activities at the local level. In particular,
significant improvements in federal data and research on wildland fires
have been made during the past 5 years. In 1999, the federal government
lacked adequate data on the location and extent of hazardous fuels to use
in selecting and designing fuel reduction projects.11 Since then, the
agencies have jointly completed a mapping of fuels nationwide that
classifies lands by differing fuel hazard levels. Although this mapping is
not done at a small enough geographic scale to support decisions on the
location and design of individual fuel reduction projects, it nevertheless
represents a significant improvement over the information that was
available in the past.

In 2003, Agriculture and Interior approved funding for development of a
geospatial data and modeling system, called LANDFIRE, to identify wildland
fire hazards with more precision and uniformity than the existing
hazardous fuels mapping and to enable comparisons of conditions between
different field locations nationwide. When operational, LANDFIRE data and
enhanced models of likely fire behavior thus will help identify the nature
and magnitude of the wildland fire risks confronting numerous community
and ecosystem resources, such as residential and commercial structures,
species habitat, air and water quality, and soils. The agencies plan to
use this information to better support their strategic decisions on
preparedness, suppression, the location and design of fuel reduction
projects, and other land management activities. Initial results from
LANDFIRE have been promising. For example, a Forest Service official, who
had used LANDFIRE to choose an approach for suppressing a fire in an area
of Montana where the prototype system was developed, said he found it much
better at identifying suppression options and their consequences than any
other currently available data. LANDFIRE- estimated to cost $40 million-is
scheduled for nationwide implementation in 2009.

Local fire management planning also has been strengthened. As we reported
in 2002, over half of the agencies' land management units had not
completed local fire management plans in accordance with the 1995 federal
wildland fire management policy.12 They subsequently adopted an expedited
schedule to complete all of these plans in 2004, and agency officials told
us that they believed they would meet this schedule. The agencies also
adopted a common interagency template for preparing these plans to ensure
greater consistency in their contents.

Other critical improvements have been made in coordination among federal
agencies responsible for wildland fire management and in collaboration
with nonfederal partners.13 In 2001, as a result of congressional
direction to the agencies to involve the states as full partners in their
efforts, Agriculture and Interior jointly adopted a 10-Year Comprehensive
Strategy with the Western Governors Association.14 This strategy, and an
implementation plan adopted in 2002, detail goals, time lines, and
responsibilities of the different parties for various actions related to a
wide range of activities, including collaboration at the local level to
identify fuel reduction priorities in different areas. Also, in 2002, the
agencies established an interagency organizational body, the Wildland Fire
Leadership Council, to improve coordination of their activities with each
other and with nonfederal parties. The council is composed of senior
Agriculture and Interior officials and nonfederal representatives. The
council meets regularly to provide policy direction on a wide range of
issues and decisions to foster necessary coordination and consistency
among federal approaches, activities, and funding of various efforts.

Progress in Accountability: Better Performance Measures and a Results
Monitoring Framework Have Been Developed

The federal government also made progress in accounting for the results it
achieves from its investments in wildland fire management activities. In
1999, the Forest Service's performance measure for fuel reductions, which
measured only the total acres of fuel reductions accomplished, created an
incentive to treat less costly acres rather than the acres that presented
the greatest hazards.15 To rectify this shortcoming, the agencies adopted
a performance measure that identifies the amount of acres moved from
high-hazard to low-hazard fuel conditions. This measure will allow them to
better determine the extent to which their fuel reduction efforts
accomplish the key goal of reducing risks to communities and ecosystems.

The agencies also made progress in developing a system to monitor the
effects of wildland fires. Without such information, they cannot determine
the nature of threats or the likely effectiveness of different actions
taken to address threats. In May 2004, the Wildland Fire Leadership
Council approved a nationwide monitoring framework for wildland fire data,
including data on fire severity that may help address this problem. While
we also have said that an implementation plan for this monitoring
framework is needed, the adoption of the framework nonetheless represents
a critical step toward enhancing wildland fire management accountability
for results.16

Agencies Face Several Challenges to Completing a Long-Needed Cohesive
Strategy for Reducing Fuels and Responding to Wildland Fire Problems

While federal land management agencies have made important progress over
the past 5 years in addressing wildland fire management issues, they
continue to face a number of challenges that will need to be met if they
are to complete development of a cohesive strategy that explicitly
identifies available long-term options and funding needed to reduce fuels
on national forests and rangelands and respond to the nation's wildland
fire threats. The nation's wildland fire problems have been decades in the
making and will take decades more to resolve. Without a cohesive strategy
and better data, agencies will have difficulty determining the extent and
severity of the wildland fire problem, targeting and coordinating their
efforts and resources, and resolving the problem in a timely and
cost-effective manner. Moreover, without such a strategy and better data,
the Congress will not have reliable information on when, how, and at what
cost wildland fire problems can be brought under control.

The federal government's strategy documents adopted thus far, such as
those associated with the National Fire Plan, establish a good framework
for addressing our nation's wildland fire problems, but these documents
still need to identify the long-term options and funding needed to reduce
and maintain fuels at acceptable levels. A clear understanding of the
options and funding needs are essential to both the agencies and the
Congress for determining the most effective and affordable approach.
However, the agencies are not currently in a position to develop these
options and identify related funding needs with any precision or
reliability because they need to complete several steps, each with its own
challenges. These steps include (1) completing and implementing the
LANDFIRE data and modeling system so that the extent and location of
wildland fire threats are more precisely known, (2) updating local fire
management plans with more precise LANDFIRE information and the latest
research so that the most promising wildland fire management practices are
included to effectively address wildland fire threats, and (3) based on
these plans, identifying the various national options and related funding
needed to reduce fuels and respond to wildland fire threats. Recently, the
agencies began an assessment of wildland fire threats that may provide a
useful framework for completing a long-needed cohesive wildland fire
management strategy.

Completing and Implementing the LANDFIRE System Is Essential to
Identifying and Addressing Wildland Fire Threats

LANDFIRE is critical to identifying and addressing wildland fire threats
to communities and ecosystems, but the agencies face several challenges
completing and implementing LANDFIRE. The agencies need LANDFIRE to more
precisely identify the extent and location of wildland fire threats and
better target fuel reduction efforts. LANDFIRE is also needed to better
reconcile the effects of fuel reduction activities with the agencies'
other stewardship responsibilities for protecting ecosystem resources,
such as air, water, soils, and species habitat. Fuel reduction activities,
such as controlled burning or mechanical treatments (using chainsaws and
heavy equipment), can adversely affect these ecosystem resources if not
done at the proper time and place. For example, mechanically removing
fuels with heavy equipment can adversely affect wildlife habitat and water
quality in many areas and controlled burning can cause air quality
problems. The agencies also need LANDFIRE to help them better measure and
assess their performance. For example, such data will enable the agencies
to better identify the relative importance of reducing fuels on the
highest-hazard lands versus maintaining conditions on low-hazard lands. As
we have noted, a separate performance measure for maintaining conditions
on these low-hazard lands is important so that their conditions do not
deteriorate to more hazardous conditions while funding is being focused on
lands with high-hazard conditions.17

The agencies, however, face several challenges in implementing LANDFIRE.
As we recently reported, the agencies lack a consistent approach to
assessing the risks of wildland fires to ecosystem resources18 and an
integrated, strategic, and unified approach to managing and using
information systems and data, including those such as LANDFIRE, in
wildland fire decision making. Currently, software, data standards,
equipment, and training vary among the agencies and field units in ways
that hamper needed sharing and consistent application of the data.19
Although the Wildland Fire Leadership Council has recently chartered a
National Wildfire Enterprise Architecture Steering Group to implement an
action plan for more effectively sharing and using these data, these
system and implementation problems are not yet resolved.

Moreover, the agencies may have to re-examine the LANDFIRE data and models
before implementing them. Recent research suggests that the effects of
climate change on wildland fire might more adversely affect the nature,
extent, and geographical distribution of hazards identified in LANDFIRE,
as well as the costs for addressing them, than previously understood. In
August 2004, a panel-appointed by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council to
investigate escalating suppression costs-reported that recent agency
research suggested that climate change could have significant implications
for the occurrence of wildland fire and the costs required to contain
it.20 The research suggests that part of the recent increase in wildland
fire has been caused by a shift in climate patterns, and that this new
pattern may likely continue for decades, resulting in further increases in
the amount of accumulated vegetation consumed nationally by wildland fire.

Fire Management Plans Will Need to Be Updated with Latest Data and
Research on Wildland Fire

Incorporating LANDFIRE data and recent research on addressing wildland
fire threats into local fire management plans will be central to
completing a cohesive long-term fuels reduction strategy. The fire
management plans are important for identifying the fuel reduction,
preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation actions needed at the local
level to more effectively address wildland fire threats. While these plans
now are all scheduled for completion in December 2004, they will be based
on outdated data once LANDFIRE is available. To improve the accuracy and
usefulness of these plans, the agencies will need to update them when more
detailed, nationally consistent LANDFIRE data become available within 5
years. The Forest Service indicated that this updating could occur during
the agency's annual review of fire management plans to determine whether
any changes to plans may be needed.

The agencies also will need to update their local fire management plans
with recent agency research on the best approaches for more effectively
addressing wildland fire threats. For example, a 2002 interagency analysis
found that protecting wildland-urban interface communities more
effectively-as well as more cost-effectively-might require locating a
higher proportion of fuel reduction projects outside of the wildland-urban
interface than currently envisioned, so that fires originating in the
wildlands do not become too large to suppress by the time they arrive at
the interface.21 Additionally, other agency research being field-tested in
California and elsewhere suggests that placing fuel reduction treatments
in specific geometric patterns can more effectively reduce the spread rate
and intensity of wildland fires. As a result, agency officials believe the
approach could provide more protection across the landscape than other
approaches to locating and designing treatments, such as placing fuel
breaks around communities and ecosystems resources. Moreover, these
geometric fuel reduction patterns, because they are more efficient,
reportedly may provide protection for up to three times as many community
and ecosystem resources as other approaches do for the same cost.22

Identifying Long-Term Fuel Reduction Options and Needed Funding Is Key to
Completing a Cohesive Strategy

As LANDFIRE is developed and fire management plans are updated, the
agencies should become better positioned to formulate and communicate to
the Congress a cohesive, long-term federal strategy that identifies
various options and the related funding needed to reduce fuels and respond
to our nation's wildland fire problems. The agencies have several efforts
under way that should help them identify these options and funding needs.

In 2002, a team of Forest Service and Interior experts produced an
estimate of the funds needed to implement eight different fuel reduction
options for protecting communities and ecosystems across the nation over
the next century. Their analysis also considered the impacts of fuels
reduction activities on likely future costs for other principal wildland
fire management activities, such as preparedness, suppression and

rehabilitation, if fuels were not reduced.23 The team concluded that
reducing the risks to communities and ecosystems across the nation could
require an approximate tripling of current fuel reduction funding to about
$1.4 billion for an initial period of a few years. These initially higher
costs would decline after fuels had been reduced enough to use less
expensive controlled burning methods in many areas and more fires could be
suppressed at lower cost, with total wildland fire management costs, as
well as risks, being reduced after 15 years. Alternatively, the team said
that not making a substantial short-term investment using a landscape
focus could increase costs, as well as risks to communities and
ecosystems, in the long term. More recently, however, Interior has said
that the costs and time required to reverse current increasing risks may
be less when other vegetation management activities are considered that
were not included in the interagency team's original assessment but also
can influence wildland fire. The interagency experts said their estimates
of long-term costs could only be considered an approximation because the
data used for their national-level analysis were not sufficiently
detailed. They said a more accurate estimate of the long-term federal
costs and consequences of different options nationwide would require
applying this national analysis framework in smaller geographic areas
using more detailed data, such as that produced by LANDFIRE, and then
aggregating these smaller-scale results.

Agency officials told us that another management system under
development-Fire Program Analysis (FPA)-also could be used to help
identify long-term fuel reduction options and related funding needs. FPA,
which is being developed in response to a congressional committee
direction to improve budget allocation tools,24 is designed to identify
the most cost-effective allocations of annual preparedness funding for
implementing agency field units' local fire management plans. Eventually,
FPA will use LANDFIRE data and provide a smaller geographical scale for
analyses of fuel reduction options. Thus, like LANDFIRE, FPA will be
critical for updating fire management plans. Officials said that the FPA
preparedness budget allocation systemwhen integrated with an
additional component that is now being considered for allocating annual
fuel reduction funding-could be instrumental in identifying the most
cost-effective long-term levels, mixes, and scheduling of these two
wildland fire management activities. The agencies began training employees
in October 2004 for initial implementation of the preparedness budget
component in February 2005. However, completely developing FPA, including
the fuel reduction funding component, is expected to cost about $40
million and take until at least 2007 and perhaps as long as 2009.

Finally, in May 2004, Agriculture and Interior began the initial phase of
a wildland fire strategic planning effort that also might contribute to
identifying long-term options and needed funding for reducing fuels and
responding to the nation's wildland fire problems. This effortthe
Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Reviewis intended to result in an
overall federal interagency strategic planning document for wildland fire
management and risk reduction and to provide a blueprint for developing
affordable and integrated fire preparedness, fuels reduction, and fire
suppression programs. Because of this effort's consideration of
affordability, it may provide a useful framework for developing a cohesive
strategy that includes identifying long-term options and related funding
needs. The preliminary planning and analysis phases of this effort are
scheduled to be completed in December 2004, followed by an initial report
expected in March 2005.

Conclusions

In our initial reporting on the wildland fire problem 5 years ago, we
concluded that it would take many years for the federal government to
successfully address all of the complex management challenges that
wildland fire presents. Accordingly, as expected, much important work
remains to be done. Nevertheless, federal agencies over the last 5 years
have laid a sound foundation for success, including initial data
development and planning and establishing a constructive, collaborative
dialogue with the states and others. This foundation will be important for
meeting the key challenges the agencies face in completing a cohesive
strategy for addressing the nation's wildland fire problems.

If the agencies' progress to date toward developing a cohesive strategy is
to be of enduring value, the agencies will need to complete ongoing
efforts such as LANDFIRE, research, and local fire management plans. The
agencies need the results of these ongoing efforts so that they can
develop a sufficiently detailed blueprint of the various available and
realistic long-term options and related funding needed for addressing our
nation's wildland fire problems. Without such a blueprint, wildland fire
will likely pose increasing risks to not only the nation's communities and
ecosystems, but also to tens of billions of dollars of federal budgetary
resources that will be spent to respond to wildland fire over the coming
decades. If these budgetary resources are not cost-effectively applied,
then the risks to communities and ecosystems will not be reduced as much
as intended or in ways that are needed and desired. Critical to
determining cost-effectiveness will be understanding the optimal timing of
appropriation investments over the long term. Thus, a focus on long-term
options and their costs provides necessary realism about available choices
for protecting communities and ecosystems and required cohesiveness among
the actions needed to implement them. Conversely, without such a long-term
focus, agencies cannot ensure that the numerous collaborative efforts they
undertake locally each year will add up to a cost-effective, affordable,
long-term national solution.

To date there have been no clear actions or a commitment by the agencies
to explicitly identify and communicate to the Congress long-term options
and the funding needed to pursue them. In order for the Congress to make
informed decisions about effective and affordable long-term approaches for
addressing our nation's wildland fire problems, it should have, as soon as
possible, a broad range of long-term options and related funding needed to
reduce and maintain wildland fuels at acceptable levels and respond to
wildland fire threats.

Recommendation for Executive Action

We recommend that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior provide
the Congress, in time for its consideration of the agencies' fiscal year
2006 wildland fire management budgets, with a joint tactical plan
outlining the critical steps the agencies will take, together with related
time frames, to complete a cohesive strategy that identifies long-term
options and needed funding for reducing and maintaining fuels at
acceptable levels and responding to the nation's wildland fire problems.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We received written comments on a draft of this report from the Forest
Service on behalf of Agriculture and from Interior. Both departments
generally concurred with our findings and recommendation, but expressed
concern about the time frame within which we recommended they provide the
Congress with a joint tactical plan for completing a cohesive strategy to
respond to wildland fire problems. We did not change our recommendation
because we believe that the departments misunderstood this time frame and
what we recommended that they provide within this period. The departments
also provided technical comments that we have incorporated into the
report, as appropriate. The Forest Service's and Interior's letters are
included in appendixes III and IV, respectively, together with our
evaluation of them.

As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days
after the date of this letter. At that time, we will send copies of this
report to other interested congressional committees. We also will send
copies to the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior and the Chief of
the Forest Service. We will make copies available to others upon request.
In addition, this report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web
site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have questions about this report, please contact me
at (202) 512-3841 or at [email protected] or David Bixler at (202) 512-7201
or [email protected]. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix
V.

Sincerely yours,

Robin M. Nazzaro Director, Natural Resources and Environment

GAO Products Related to Federal Wildland Fire ManagementAppendix I

Wildland Fires: Forest Service and BLM Need Better Information and a
Systematic Approach for Assessing the Risks of Environmental Effects.
GAO-04-705. Washington, D.C.: June 24, 2004.

Federal Land Management: Additional Guidance on Community Involvement
Could Enhance Effectiveness of Stewardship Contracting. GAO-04-652.
Washington, D.C.: June 14, 2004.

Wildfire Suppression: Funding Transfers Cause Project Cancellations and
Delays, Strained Relationships, and Management Disruptions. GAO-04-612.
Washington, D.C.: June 2, 2004.

Biscuit Fire: Analysis of Fire Response, Resource Availability, and
Personnel Certification Standards. GAO-04-426. Washington, D.C.: April 12,
2004.

Forest Service: Information on Appeals and Litigation Involving Fuel
Reduction Activities. GAO-04-52. Washington, D.C.: October 24, 2003.

Geospatial Information: Technologies Hold Promise for Wildland Fire
Management, but Challenges Remain. GAO-03-1047. Washington, D.C.:
September 23, 2003.

Wildland Fire Management: Additional Actions Required to Better Identify
and Prioritize Lands Needing Fuels Reduction. GAO-03-805. Washington,
D.C.: August 15, 2003.

Wildland Fires: Forest Service's Removal of Timber Burned by Wildland
Fires. GAO-03-808R. Washington, D.C.: July 10, 2003.

Wildland Fires: Better Information Needed on Effectiveness of Emergency
Stabilization and Rehabilitation Treatments. GAO-03-430. Washington, D.C.:
April 4, 2003.

Results-Oriented Management: Agency Crosscutting Actions and Plans in
Border Control, Flood Mitigation and Insurance, Wetlands, and Wildland
Fire Management. GAO-03-321. Washington, D.C.: December 20, 2002.

Wildland Fire Management: Reducing the Threat of Wildland Fires Requires
Sustained and Coordinated Effort. GAO-02-843T. Washington, D.C: June 13,
2002.

Wildland Fire Management: Improved Planning Will Help Agencies Better
Identify Fire-Fighting Preparedness Needs. GAO-02-158. Washington, D.C.:
March 29, 2002.

Severe Wildland Fires: Leadership and Accountability Needed to Reduce
Risks to Communities and Resources. GAO-02-259. Washington, D.C.: January
31, 2002.

The National Fire Plan: Federal Agencies Are Not Organized to Effectively
and Efficiently Implement the Plan. GAO-01-1022T. Washington, D.C.: July
31, 2001.

Forest Service Roadless Areas: Potential Impact of Proposed Regulations on
Ecological Sustainability. GAO-01-47. Washington, D.C.: November 8, 2000.

Reducing Wildfire Threats: Funds Should be Targeted to the Highest Risk
Areas. GAO/T-RCED-00-296. Washington, D.C.: September 13, 2000.

Fire Management: Lessons Learned from the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire
and Actions Needed to Reduce Fire Risks. GAO/T-RCED-00-273. Washington,
D.C.: August 14, 2000.

Fire Management: Lessons Learned from the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire.
GAO/T-RCED-00-257. Washington, D.C.: August 14, 2000.

Forest Service: Actions Needed for the Agency to Become More Accountable
for Its Performance. GAO/T-RCED-00-236. Washington, D.C.: June 29, 2000.

Park Service: Agency Is Not Meeting Its Structural Fire Safety
Responsibilities. GAO/RCED-00-154. Washington, D.C.: May 22, 2000.

Forest Service: A Framework for Improving Accountability.
GAO/RCED/AIMD-00-2. Washington, D.C.: October 13, 1999.

Federal Wildfire Activities: Issues Needing Future Attention.
GAO/T-RCED-99-282. Washington, D.C.: September 14, 1999.

Federal Wildfire Activities: Current Strategy and Issues Needing
Attention. GAO/RCED-99-233. Washington, D.C.: August 13, 1999.

Western National Forests: Status of Forest Service's Efforts to Reduce
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats. GAO/T-RCED-99-241. Washington, D.C.: June
29, 1999.

Forest Service Priorities: Evolving Mission Favors Resource Protection
over Production. GAO/RCED-99-166. Washington, D.C.: June 17, 1999.

Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy Is Needed to Address
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats. GAO/RCED-99-65. Washington, D.C.: April 2,
1999.

Scope and MethodologyAppendix II

To identify the progress that federal land management agencies have made
in addressing the threat posed by wildland fires over the past 5 years and
the challenges that remain over the next 5 years, we reviewed past GAO,
Congressional Research Service, and National Academy of Public
Administration reports on wildland fires. We interviewed officials from
the Forest Service and Department of the Interior agencies that are
responsible for wildland fire management and obtained data on acres burned
from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. We also
interviewed and obtained data from Forest Service and Interior officials
responsible for developing long-term fuel treatment options and costs,
LANDFIRE, the Fire Program Analysis system, climate change estimates, fire
management plans, performance measures, and the Quadrennial Fire and Fuels
Review. In addition, we interviewed officials and obtained data from the
National Academy of Public Administration and the Brookings Institution.
We conducted our work between May 2004 and November 2004 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Comments from the Department of AgricultureAppendix III

The following are GAO's comments on the USDA Forest Service's letter dated
December 10, 2005.

GAO Comments

1.We did not change our characterization of the period over which progress
was made because efforts made earlier than 4 years ago provided an
important basis for subsequent progress, including (1) the September 8,
2000, report to the President from the Secretaries of Agriculture and the
Interior that was used to inform the 2001 appropriation request and (2)
the Forest Service's formulation of its own fuel reduction strategy that
was initiated in 1999.

2.We clarified the language of our report to make clearer our meaning
that, although national guidance was issued, this guidance-as we have
previously reported-was not specific enough for prioritizing fuels
reduction projects.

3.We clarified the language in our report to make clearer our meaning
that, by identifying landscape fuel hazards, LANDFIRE will help identify
the risks to those resources.

4.We have included this observation in our report. However, we note that
the agencies will need to ensure this is done because of (1) the likely
impacts that the LANDFIRE and FPA systems will have on the fire management
plans, (2) the importance of the plans for identifying aggregate national
fuel reduction options and costs, and (3) agencies' past failures to keep
these plans up-to-date, as our report notes.

5.We did not recommend that the long-term options and associated costs be
identified in the joint tactical plan. Rather, we said that this joint
tactical plan should specify the steps and related time frames that the
agencies will take in completing a cohesive strategy containing options
and costs. In addition, we did not recommend that the joint tactical plan
be provided concurrently with the agencies' fiscal year 2006 budget
submissions, but only that it be provided in time for the Congress's
deliberation of the agencies' appropriations for fiscal year 2006. Should
the agencies subsequently identify adjustments that need to be made to the
tactical plan because of evolving LANDFIRE and FPA processes, they can so
inform the Congress of those adjustments and the reasons for them. Because
this is a long-term effort in which each year's progress can have
significant long-term fiscal, resource, and human safety consequences, we
believe it is important from this point forward that the agencies more
transparently identify for the Congress the specific steps they will
undertake, and their associated time frames, for identifying long-term
options and costs. Accordingly, we made no change to our recommendation.

Comments from the Department of the InteriorAppendix IV

The following are GAO's comments on the Department of the Interior's
letter dated December 10, 2005.

GAO Comments

1.We did not recommend that the long-term options and associated costs be
identified in the joint tactical plan. Rather, we said that this joint
tactical plan should specify the steps and related time frames that the
agencies will take in completing a cohesive strategy containing options
and costs. In addition, we did not recommend that the joint tactical plan
be provided concurrently with the agencies' fiscal year 2006 budget
submissions, but only that it be provided in time for the Congress's
deliberation of the agencies' appropriations for fiscal year 2006. Should
the agencies subsequently identify adjustments that need to be made to the
tactical plan because of evolving LANDFIRE and FPA processes, they can so
inform the Congress of those adjustments and the reasons for them. Because
this is a long-term effort in which each year's progress can have
significant long-term fiscal, resource, and human safety consequences, we
believe it is important from this point forward that the agencies more
transparently identify for the Congress the specific steps they will
undertake, and their associated time frames, for identifying long-term
options and costs. Accordingly, we made no change to our recommendation.

2.We clarified the language of our report to make clearer our meaning
that, although national guidance was issued, as we have previously
reported, this guidance was not specific enough for prioritizing fuels
reduction projects.

3.In reporting on the progress that has been made in clarifying
priorities, we are merely noting that the act provided a good starting
point for undertaking analysis to identify and prioritize funding needs.
We neither are criticizing the emphasis that the agencies previously
placed on protecting wildland urban interface areas nor are making an
assessment of the act's priorities, since our report notes that further
analysis is needed to determine the most cost-effective allocation among
priorities.

4.We clarified the language in our report to make clearer our meaning
that, by identifying landscape fuel hazards, LANDFIRE will help identify
the risks to those resources.

5.We agree these factors should be among those raised by climate change
research that our report says should be considered in identifying
long-term options and associated costs.

6.We have modified our draft to include the observation that Interior
believes inclusion of this additional acreage would have substantially
changed the outcome the team reported. Our report already noted the
interagency team's view that the accuracy of the assessment's outcomes
will be improved by use of more detailed data such as from LANDFIRE.
However, we are encouraged by the departments' commitment, expressed in
both of their comments on our draft report, to use this type of analysis
to identify and communicate to the Congress long-term fuel reduction
options and costs, reversing a June 2002 decision by the Wildland Fire
Leadership Council not to do so. We believe that the fulfillment of this
commitment is needed to provide the Congress with a sufficiently informed
understanding of the long-term consequences of different appropriation
choices that it will need to make over the coming years and decades to
adequately and cost-effectively address wildland fire management issues.

7.We did not change our characterization of the period over which progress
was made because efforts made earlier than 4 years ago provided an
important basis for subsequent progress, including (1) the September 8,
2000, report to the President from the Secretaries of Agriculture and the
Interior that was used to inform the 2001 appropriation request and (2)
the Forest Service's formulation of its own fuel reduction strategy that
was initiated in 1999.

GAO Contacts and Staff AcknowledgmentsAppendix V

GAO Contacts

Robin M. Nazzaro, (202) 512-3841 David P. Bixler, (202) 512-7201

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to those named above, Jonathan Altshul, Barry T. Hill, Richard
Johnson, Chester Joy, and Jonathan McMurray made key contributions to this
report.

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