Number: 2016-05
WHEREAS, the acreage, frequency, and cost of wildfires has increased significantly in recent decades, including on federal lands, due to drought, insects, disease, climate change, housing developments, and other factors; and
WHEREAS, five of the ten highest years for U.S. acres burned in wildfires occurred in the last decade, including the most acres ever recorded burned in one year in 2015 (10.1 million acres); and
WHEREAS, in a practice known as “fire borrowing”, the U.S. Forest Service funds much of its wildfire fighting program by using money appropriated for other important agency programs including wildlife, forest, recreation and resource management, depriving those programs of needed dollars; and
WHEREAS, US Forest Service expenditures for timber, wildlife, recreation, and conservation are declining as fire costs soar, with the 2014 U.S. Forest Service budget for vegetation and watershed management down 22%; facilities maintenance down 67%; road maintenance down 46%; trail maintenance down 14%; and wildlife and fisheries management down 17%, partly because of the need to borrow funds from these core programs to fight wildfires; and
WHEREAS, the cost of fighting wildfires is a budgeting challenge for all federal land management agencies, and now consumes over half of the Forest Service’s annual budget, increasing to over $2 billion in 2015 from $240 million in 1985.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation, in its annual meeting assembled June 16-18, 2016 in Estes Park, Colorado, urges Congress and the President to work together to pass legislation ending the practice of fire borrowing and to manage wildfires as natural disasters by establishing a dedicated, reliable, and adequate source of funding sufficient to allow the U.S Forest Service and public land management agencies within the Department of the Interior to manage wildfires without diverting money from other agency budgets.