Biden’s “Burn Back Better”

The United States has a vast area of public forest that needs to burn. Wildfires chip away at these hundreds of millions of acres of decadent forest every year. Still, nationally the area that needs to burn to restore wildlife habitat and protect towns is staggering. Finally, the Biden administration is taking the problem somewhat seriously and addressing pent-up issues that have burdened the wildland fire world for decades.

Fire people call the area of land needing fire the “fire deficit”. Virtually all interior forest and grassland areas frequently burned before Euro-Americans interfered with fire and allowed fuel build-ups across the West. Land managers figured out that excluding fire from many landscapes increased the size and severity of fires and ruined trees and wildlife habitats that fire nurtures.

Large agencies like the US Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of land, know they need to ramp up their efforts to reintroduce fire, thin out thickets of brush that grew during fire suppression years, and then maintain treated areas with future prescribed burning and other forms of fire. But all that costs money which Congress has not provided until big fires in the national news have focused public attention. The Biden administration is starting to take the fire deficit problem seriously.

The much-lauded Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill passed last year have a trove of money for various environmental projects, including wildfire. Agencies needing money to plan and implement thinning projects and large-scale fire reintroduction will benefit from this Act.

The Biden administration will spend $930 million to treat 20 million acres in the US to address forests needing fire and fuel treatments. The money will also be used to thin forests close to thousands of Western communities so that large fires in nearby public landscapes calm down when they approach towns. With climate change warming and drying western forests, we are racing against time to treat forests before the next wildfire takes charge of the fuels issue.

The Forest Service is corralling these new fire efforts in the ten-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy, which focuses on particular fire sheds close to communities. The Forest Service will also work with Department of Interior agencies on fuel treatments.

Treating acres with fire or thinning or both are expensive. Prescribed burning costs around $1500 per acre, while thinning costs $5000 per acre. On the other hand, wildfire suppression costs around $50,000 per acre. Suppressing fire over the last century has created an expensive problem for the US.

Helping Firefighters

The Biden team is also looking at a shortage of firefighters on the federal level. Federal firefighters have been earning about $13 per hour, above the federal minimum wage but lag behind fast food worker salaries. Biden promised to raise the pay to $15 per hour, increase benefits and develop well-defined career tracks so firefighters are not stuck in seasonal jobs for years. Given the risk and training required for firefighters, more than $15 per hour is needed to compete with non-fire jobs. Biden has temporarily raised pay, but the increases need to be made permanent by Congress.

Firefighters also need help with housing shortages in the rural areas where they work. The Biden administration is asking Congress for money to build employee housing, so firefighters don’t have to live in tents or cars when not on fires.

Fighting large fires is expensive, destructive, and often ineffective. We need to prepare for climate change with the understanding that most acres will burn in the coming decades, either as managed fire or wildfire. People might accept those fires and shepherd them rather than fight them.

FUSEE understands the need for vastly more prescribed burning and wildland fire use to address the fire deficit. We’ve long advocated for less fuel treatments in remote areas and for more fuel reduction close to towns and infrastructure. Ultimately federal agencies need to move away from expensive and ineffective firefighting in remote areas and focus on protecting communities. In the face of warming and drying forests, the new Biden initiatives are a step in the right direction.