Battling wildfires across our country takes a toll on funding for natural resources and conservation efforts here in Iowa, even if those fires don’t often hit close to home.
At a price tag of more than $2.4 billion so far, the government has spent more money fighting fires this year than any other wildfire season on record. Fires have already burned through more than 8.8 million acres of American land this year — an area bigger than the size of Maryland — according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
While earthquakes, floods and other disasters use emergency funds for damages and recovery, wildfire disasters are paid for directly from the budgets of federal agencies.
As Congress considers additional disaster relief aid in response to the hurricanes that recently devastated parts of the U.S. and Caribbean, lawmakers should also provide further funding for fire management and permanently change the way the U.S. pays to fight wildfires. Congress needs to treat wildfires like the disasters they are and make disaster funding accessible for federal firefighting efforts.
Right now, when the U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior make their annual agency budgets, they have to plan for costs based on past fire seasons. But each new season is proving to be anything but average.
Catastrophic fires are happening more and more often as increasingly extreme weather patterns lead to bigger fires. More people now live near fire-prone habitats too, so firefighting costs are going up year after year.
This flawed way to pay for fighting these fires means that federal agencies must choose: Put the fires out, or spend the money on the conservation and land management work on which they’ve historically focused.
While the priority is understandably to save lives and property, it means agencies borrow money from programs like recreation and forest natural resources to make up budget shortfalls. But it’s that conservation work — such as restoration and management of forests and grasslands by thinning and reducing encroaching brush, trees and invasive species – that helps reduce the risk of fire in the first place, maintaining and creating resilience in grassland and wetland systems that reduces the risk of wildfire.
Not all wildfires are bad or need to be put out. Fires are an essential part of the natural cycle of our grasslands, savannas, and forests and many species depend on fire for their survival. In addition, prescribed or controlled burns can prevent the build up of brush and undesirable trees and maintain healthy systems.
But when our forests and grasslands aren’t healthy — when brush builds up and groups of trees are too tightly packed — wildfires can rage out of control. They destroy homes and communities, harm natural and cultural resources and threaten human lives.
It doesn’t make sense to have firefighting come at the expense of projects that would make our lands healthier — and less fire-prone — in the first place.
We need to break out of this cycle, and Congress holds the keys to a solution.
Lawmakers are currently considering how to fix this problem so we can pay for firefighting, reduce the risk of future megafires and still benefit from conservation and other programs here in Iowa. Our recreation and natural resource programs are hurt in Iowa when the government must funnel that money into fighting fires outside the state
The Senate this fall introduced the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, and the House of Representatives introduced a similar bill this summer. The Senate also added a fire-funding solution to a flood insurance bill.
At The Nature Conservancy in Iowa, we think these approaches are a great idea, and they can’t be enacted soon enough. We’ve been collaborating with a broad coalition — ranging from sportsmen’s groups to other environmental organizations — to show just how much bipartisan support is out there for these bills.
You can help, too, by letting your members of Congress know a wildfire funding fix is important to you.
We know that firefighting costs are going to continue to rise. And under the government’s current funding structure, the U.S. can’t keep up.
We need to not only fight wildfires, but also fund conservation programs across Iowa and the U.S. And we need to keep our forests and grasslands healthy to prevent fires — and protect our land, property and people in Iowa and across America.
Scott Moats is the director of stewardship and fire manager for The Nature Conservancy in Iowa. To learn more visit www.nature.org/iowa
