Description:
These data display the costs per acre in fighting emergency forest fires over the past 20 years. All dollar figures are scaled to 1999 dollars for comparison's sake. The costs are for fighting emergency forest fires and exclude fighting intentional or managed forest fires (begun in 1995). Furthermore, these figures only include fire fighting in the National Forest System (NFS), which is managed by the United States Forest Service, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. Not included here are data for fire suppression in private, state, or other federal forests, such as those managed by the Bureau of Land Management or the National Park Service.
There is a general, increasing trend in the annual number of acres burned in the NFS since the early 1980's. In 1987, 1.2 million acres burned, the first year since 1919 to exceed 1 million acres. More than 1 million acres burned again in 1988, 1994, and 1996. In year 2000, 2,138,910 acres burned in the NFS, mostly in the interior West. These fires were fought at the expense of $1,026,000,000 or $479.68 per acre (year 2000 dollars). The increase in the number of acres burned is certainly an outcome of years of forest management practice in which fire suppression was the principal goal. This practice allowed for the excessive buildup of fuel (woody debris) on forest floors that, when ignited, caused large, hot, and destructive fires. Another reason for the overall increase in the number of acres burned is the general increase in the number of humans that visit the forests, especially for recreation. Today about 90% of all forest fires (by acreage) are caused by humans, rather than lightning.
Why the increasing cost per acre in fighting forest fires? In the journal Fire Management Today, where these data were obtained, Hutch Brown writes, "One result [of the increase in the number of acres burned] has been a disturbing rise in both total suppression costs and the cost per acre burned. Large fires in particular can be associated with stunning suppression costs. For example, the 1999 Big Bar and Kirk Complex Fires in California together consumed more than 227,000 acres (92,000 ha) at a cost of about $178 million." What Brown fails to mentioned is the obvious impact of the growing resident population near the NFS lands. When houses are near to forest fires, a great number of dollars is spent protecting the structures from fire damage.
