Western National Forests: Nearby Communities Are Increasingly Threatened
By Catastrophic Wildfires (Testimony, 02/09/99, GAO/T-RCED-99-79).
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the wildfire hazards
faced by communities located adjacent to national forests in the dry,
inland portion of the Western United States, focusing on: (1) the extent
and seriousness of threats posed by national forest wildfires to nearby
communities in the interior West; (2) agency efforts to address them;
and (3) barriers to successfully implementing these efforts.
GAO noted that: (1) during this century, two major changes have occurred
in the national forests of the interior West: (a) the Forest Service's
decades-old policy of putting out fires in the national forests resulted
in increased undergrowth and density of trees creating high levels of
fuels for catastrophic wildfires; and (b) the number of people living
along the boundaries of national forests has grown significantly; (2) as
a result, the increasing number of large wildfires, and of acres burned
by them pose increasingly grave risks to human health, safety, property,
and infrastructure in these areas which are commonly referred to as
wildland/urban interface areas; (3) during the 1990s, the Forest Service
began to address this problem by: (a) establishing an objective of
increasing the number of acres on which excessive fuel levels are
reduced; (b) announcing a priority for such reductions in wildland/urban
interface areas; (c) restructuring its budget to better ensure that
funds are available for such reductions; and (d) proposing demonstration
projects to test innovative approaches for reducing fuels; (4) Congress
has supported these efforts by increasing funding for fuels reduction,
authorizing demonstration projects, and authorizing a multi-year
research program to better assess problems and solutions; (5) these
efforts may fall short because the Forest Service lacks a cohesive
strategy for overcoming several barriers to effectively and efficiently
reducing fuels on national forests; and (6) these barriers include: (a)
potential conflicts between fuel reduction efforts and other agency
stewardship responsibilities, including protecting air quality,
watersheds, and wildlife habitat; (b) program incentives that tend to
focus efforts on areas that may not represent the highest fire hazards;
(c) agency contracting procedures that are not designed for removing
large amounts of materials with little or no commercial value; and (d)
the high costs of such removals, which may be as much as several hundred
million dollars annually.
--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------
REPORTNUM: T-RCED-99-79
TITLE: Western National Forests: Nearby Communities Are
Increasingly Threatened By Catastrophic Wildfires
DATE: 02/09/99
SUBJECT: National forests
Forest conservation
Emergency preparedness
Forest management
Environmental monitoring
Wildlife conservation
Fuels
IDENTIFIER: Dept. of the Interior Joint Fire Science Program
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Cover
================================================================ COVER
Before the Subcommittee on Forests and
Forest Health, Committee on Resources,
House of Representatives
For release on Delivery
Expected at
2:00 p.m., EST
Tuesday
February 9, 1999
WESTERN NATIONAL FORESTS - NEARBY
COMMUNITIES ARE INCREASINGLY
THREATENED BY CATASTROPHIC
WILDFIRES
Statement of Barry T. Hill,
Associate Director,
Energy, Resources, and Science Issues,
Resources, Community, and Economic
Development Division
GAO/T-RCED-99-79
GAO/RCED-99-79T
(141070)
Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV
GAO -
RCED -
============================================================ Chapter 0
Madame Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
We are here today to discuss the results of our work to date for you
on the wildfire hazards faced by communities located adjacent to
national forests in the dry, inland portion of the western United
States (hereafter referred to as the ¹interior Westº). About 60
percent of all national forests managed by the Department of
Agriculture's Forest Service are located in this region of the
country, which generally extends north and south from the Canadian to
the Mexican borders and east and west from the Black Hills in South
Dakota to the Cascade mountain range in Washington and Oregon, the
Coastal range in California, and the southwestern deserts. (See app.
I.)
Historically, the tree stands in many forests of this region
developed distinctive characteristics in response to frequent
low-intensity fires and a lack of rainfall, which slows the
decomposition of dead and downed trees. However, human activities
over the last century and a half have introduced changes in the
structure and composition of these tree stands. These changes have
raised concerns about the resulting potential for more large, intense
wildfires on national forests and about the threats that they may
pose.
My testimony today presents our observations to date on (1) the
extent and seriousness of threats posed by national forest wildfires
to nearby communities in the interior West, (2) agency efforts to
address them, and (3) barriers to successfully implementing these
efforts. Our work draws on visits over the last year and a half to
several Forest Service field locations, as well as interviews with
and review of data provided by, agency and outside experts. We will
complete our work and issue a report to you on this, as well as
wildfire threats to national forest resources, in the spring of this
year.
In summary, Madame Chairman, the information that we have gathered to
date suggests the following:
-- During this century, two major changes have occurred in the
national forests of the interior West. First, the Forest
Service's decades-old policy of putting out fires in the
national forests has resulted in increased undergrowth and
density of trees creating high levels of fuels for catastrophic
wildfires. (See appendixes III and IV.) This has transformed as
many as 39 million acres of the interior West's national forests
into a tinderbox. Second, the number of people living along the
boundaries of national forests has grown significantly. As a
result, the increasing number of large wildfires, and of acres
burned by them, pose increasingly grave risks to human health,
safety, property, and infrastructure in these areas which are
commonly referred to as "wildland/urban interfaceº areas.
-- During the 1990s, the Forest Service began to address this
problem by (1) establishing an objective of increasing the
number of acres on which excessive fuel levels are reduced, (2)
announcing a priority for such reductions in wildland/urban
interface areas, (3) restructuring its budget to better ensure
that funds are available for such reductions, and (4) proposing
demonstration projects to test innovative approaches for
reducing fuels. The Congress has supported these efforts by
increasing funding for fuels reduction, authorizing
demonstration projects, and authorizing a multi-year research
program to better assess problems and solutions. However, these
efforts are in a race against time and may fall short.
-- These efforts may fall short because the Forest Service lacks a
cohesive strategy for overcoming several barriers to effectively
and efficiently reducing fuels on national forests. These
barriers include (1) potential conflicts between fuel reduction
efforts and other agency stewardship responsibilities, including
protecting air quality, watersheds, and wildlife habitat; (2)
program incentives that tend to focus efforts on areas that may
not represent the highest fire hazards; (3) agency contracting
procedures that are not designed for removing large amounts of
materials with little or no commercial value; and (4) the high
costs of such removals, which may be as much as several hundred
million dollars annually.
CATASTROPHIC WILDFIRES ON
NATIONAL FORESTS INCREASINGLY
THREATEN NEARBY COMMUNITIES
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:1
The most common type of forested lands in the national forests of the
interior West are at warm, dry, lower elevations and are generally
dominated by ponderosa pine. These are known as "frequent fire
interval" forests because, before pioneers settled in these areas,
fire historically occurred in them about every 5 to 30 years. (See
app. II.) Because frequent fires kept these forests clear of
undergrowth, fuels seldom accumulated and the fires were generally of
low intensity, largely consuming grasses and undergrowth and not
igniting the highly combustible crowns, or tops, of large trees.
However, various human activities, but primarily the decades-old
policy of suppressing fire in the national forests, have generally
prevented fire from playing its historical role of limiting the
forests' density and clearing undergrowth and downed material.
Without frequent fires, vegetation has accumulated, many tree stands
have become denser, and less fire tolerant tree species have become
more prevalent. (See apps. III and IV.) In these currently denser
stands in the national forests of the interior West, many smaller
dead and dying trees now form fuel "ladders" that conduct fire into
the crowns of larger trees. Under these conditions, large, intense,
and catastrophic wildfires have become increasingly numerous. For
example, over the last decade, the number of acres of national forest
lands burned by wildfires, more than 90 percent of which were in the
interior West, has increased, reversing the trend of the previous
three-quarters of a century. (See app. V.) Moreover, since 1984,
the average number of fires annually on national forests that burn
1,000 acres or more has increased from 25 to 80, and the total number
of acres burned (including nearby lands) by these fires has more than
quadrupled, from 164,000 to 765,000. (See app. VI.) Since 1990, 91
percent of these large fires and 96 percent of the acres burned by
them were in the interior West. According to the Forest Service, 39
million acres on national forests are now at high risk of
catastrophic wildfire, and virtually all of these lands are located
in the lower-elevation, frequent-fire forests of the interior West
that are dominated by ponderosa pine. (See app. VII.)
In recent years, the number of people living along the boundaries of
the national forests has grown rapidly. (See app. VIII.) As a
result, the increasing numbers of larger, more intense fires pose
grave hazards to human health, safety, property, and infrastructure.
Not only have lives been lost, but because smoke from such fires
contains substantial amounts of fine particulate matter and other
hazardous pollutants, the fires can pose substantial health risks to
people living in this wildland/urban interface. Catastrophic
wildfires threaten not only human health, lives, and property, but
also infrastructure vital to nearby communities. For example, the
1996 Buffalo Creek fire, which burned several thousand acres and
threatened private property in the wildland/urban interface southwest
of Denver, left forest soils subject to extreme erosion. Subsequent
repeated rainstorms washed what ordinarily would have been several
years' worth of sediment into a reservoir that supplies Denver with
water. As a result, the Denver Water Board has estimated that it
will incur several million dollars of ongoing expenses for dredging
the reservoir and treating water--an amount that is several times the
cost of fighting the fire.
Finally, the growing number of large wildfires and acres
burned--coupled with the increasing complexity of fire suppression in
the wildland/urban interface--has greatly increased the costs of
suppressing fires. From fiscal year 1986 through fiscal year 1994,
the 10-year rolling average of annual costs for fighting fires grew
from $134 million to $335 million, or by 150 percent, in constant
1994 dollars. (See app. IX.) Since 1990, 95 percent of these costs
were incurred in the interior West. Moreover, the costs associated
with preparedness, including the costs of keeping equipment and
personnel ready to fight fires, are also increasing. For the 6
fiscal years from 1992 through 1997, these costs increased from $189
million to $326 million, or by 72 percent.\1 (See app. X.)
--------------------
\1 Federal Lands: Information About Land Management Agencies'
Wildfire Preparedness Activities (GAO/RCED-98-48R, Dec. 18, 1997)
and Federal Lands: Wildfire Preparedness and Suppression
Expenditures for Fiscal Years 1993 Through 1997 (GAO/T-RCED-98-247,
Aug. 4, 1998).
THE FOREST SERVICE IS
ATTEMPTING TO ADDRESS WILDFIRE
THREATS
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2
In recent years, the Forest Service has taken steps to address the
increasing threat of catastrophic wildfires on national forests. In
1995, it announced its intention to refocus its fire management
program on reducing accumulated fuels. Specifically, a 1995 internal
agency report recommended increasing the number of acres on which
accumulated fuels are reduced annually from about 570,000 to about 3
million by fiscal year 2005.\2 In 1997, the Chief of the Forest
Service said the agency intended to implement this recommendation and
that the agency planned to continue reducing fuels on 3 million-acres
per year through fiscal year 2015. By that time, the agency believes
that it will have adequately resolved the problem of national forest
lands being at high risk of uncontrollable, highly destructive
wildfires.
To implement its increased emphasis on reducing accumulated fuels,
the Forest Service restructured and redefined its fiscal year 1998
budget for wildland fire management to better ensure that funds are
available for these activities.\3 In fiscal year 1998, it announced
that the funds appropriated for reducing fuels would be allocated to
emphasize protecting communities at high-risk in wildland/urban
interface areas. The agency has also (1) revised its wildland fire
management policy to more clearly spell out its responsibilities and
reimbursable costs so that nonfederal parties can understand the
consequences of not working with the agency to reduce the risk of
wildfire on their adjacent lands and (2) proposed a number of pilot
projects in collaboration with willing nonfederal partners to
demonstrate the role of mechanical methods (including timber
harvesting) of removing materials to reduce accumulated fuels.
The Congress has supported the Forest Service's efforts to reduce
accumulated fuels by, among other things, increasing the funding for
these activities in recent years. In addition, in acting on the
agency's fiscal year 1998 budget, the House and Senate appropriations
committees approved a restructuring of the Forest Service's budget to
better ensure that funds are available for reducing accumulated
fuels. The committees also earmarked $8 million in fiscal year 1998
for the agency and the Department of the Interior to begin a
multiyear program, called the Joint Fire Science Program, to gather
consistent information on accumulated fuels, methods of reducing
them, the potential effects on other resources of these different
methods, and their relative cost-effectiveness. The agencies
currently lack adequate data in all of these areas and, in January
1998, the agencies issued a plan for conducting this research
program.\4 Moreover, as requested by the Forest Service, the Congress
also authorized, in the agency's fiscal year 1999 appropriations act,
demonstration projects for reducing accumulated fuels.
Many experts believe that these efforts by the Forest Service and the
Congress are in a race against time. A 1993 assessment of forest
health in the interior West, published in 1994, concluded that only a
"brief window of opportunity" of perhaps 15 to 30 years exists for
management intervention before damage from uncontrollable wildfires
becomes widespread, setting the stage for a repeat of the current
problems far into the 21st century.\5 More than five of those years
have already passed. Furthermore, the Forest Service's current plans
may significantly underestimate the number of acres on which fuels
must be reduced annually to adequately reduce fire hazards.
Specifically, the agency's current and planned allocations of
appropriated fuels reduction funding largely emphasize maintaining
satisfactory conditions on lands in other regions of the country
which currently have low levels of accumulated fuels so that
conditions on these lands do not also become hazardous. Because
maintaining current satisfactory conditions on these lands will
require continued fuels reduction on about 1 million acres per year,
only about two-thirds of the planned 3 million acre per year annual
national fuels reduction effort will take place each year in the
interior West, where virtually all of the most serious problems are
located. As a result, as many as 10 million acres in the interior
West may still have excessive fuel levels and may remain at risk of
uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfire at the end of fiscal year 2015.
The Forest Service, however, may be able to substantially reduce fire
hazards without reducing fuels on all 39 million acres currently at
high risk of catastrophic fire. For example, it may be able to
construct fuelbreaks--i.e., areas where excessive fuels have been
removed--in strategic locations to isolate areas with excessive fuels
and thus limit the spread of large fires. However, the Forest
Service has not yet developed a strategy for constructing fuelbreaks
or implementing any alternative strategy to accomplish the same
purpose. Thus, until the agency develops such a strategy, it will
not have a basis for eliminating any current high-risk areas from its
fuels reduction efforts or for assuring the Congress and the public
that hazards to nearby communities will be adequately reduced.
--------------------
\2 Course to the Future: Positioning Fire and Aviation Management,
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (Washington, D.C.,
1995).
\3 FY 1998 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on
Appropriations, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (Feb.
1997).
\4 Joint Fire Science Plan, Department of the Interior and U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (Washington, D.C., 1998).
\5 Assessing Forest Ecosystem Health in the Inland West, Forest
Policy Center (Washington D.C., 1994).
THE AGENCY LACKS A COHESIVE
STRATEGY FOR OVERCOMING SEVERAL
BARRIERS TO REDUCING
ACCUMULATED FUELS
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3
Several significant barriers must be overcome in developing a
cohesive strategy to reduce wildfire hazards on the national forests
of the interior West. The first of these barriers is that methods
for reducing accumulated fuels can sometimes be difficult to
reconcile with other legislatively mandated stewardship objectives,
including meeting clean air and water quality standards and
protecting threatened and endangered species. For instance, many
agency and outside experts believe that, ultimately, avoiding
catastrophic wildfires and restoring forest health in the interior
West will require reintroducing fire through burning under controlled
conditions to reduce fuels. However, winter snows limit the time
available for burning, and dry summer weather creates a high risk
that, given the massive levels of accumulated fuels, controlled fires
will escape and become uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires.
Moreover, several officials and experts we spoke with believe that
emissions from controlled fires on the scale needed to adequately
reduced accumulated fuels would violate federal air quality standards
under the Clean Air Act and that the act would thus not permit the
desired level of burning either immediately or possibly even in the
long term. The Forest Service and the Environmental Protection
Agency, which administers the Clean Air Act, are currently conducting
a 3-year experiment to better determine the impact of emissions from
controlled fires.
For these reasons, many experts agree that fuels must be reduced in
most areas of the interior West, at least initially, by mechanical
means, including commercial timber harvesting, in conjunction with
controlled burning. The Forest Service currently uses its timber
sales management program to reduce accumulated fuels.\6 However, the
use of timber harvesting to reduce fuels has been limited by concerns
about its adverse effects on other stewardship objectives, including
wildlife habitat and watershed conditions. Specifically, in fiscal
year 1997, timber harvesting was used to reduce fuels on only about
95,000 acres, or less than 5 percent of the acres that are projected
to need fuel reduction annually to achieve the agency's long-term
goal. Forest Service officials told us that it was not likely that
commercial timber harvesting could be increased enough to adequately
reduce fuels on the vast amount of acreage needing such reductions.
A second significant barrier that must be overcome in developing a
cohesive strategy is that both the timber sales management program
and the fuels reduction program funded by appropriations currently
contain incentives which tend to focus efforts on areas that may not
present the greatest fire hazards. For example, under its fuel
reduction program, the Forest Service's lone performance indicator
measures the number of acres treated. Agency field staff told us
that funding for forests often depends on their ability to contribute
to the agency's annual acreage target. As a result, in order to
reduce fuels on more acres, they often focus treatments on areas
where the costs of reducing fuels are low, rather than on areas with
the highest fire hazards, including especially wildland/urban
interface areas. These areas often have significantly higher
per-acre fuel reduction costs because greater care must be taken to
avoid fire and smoke hazards of controlled burning, raising costs.
Additionally, while timber harvesting may make useful contributions
to reducing accumulated fuels in many circumstances, reducing fuels
with the funds allocated for timber sales management also results in
an incentive for forests to focus on less critical areas. The Forest
Service stresses that its timber sales management program is
increasingly being used for efforts to improve forest health,
including efforts to prevent catastrophic fires.\7 However, the
agency continues to rely on timber production to fund many of its
programs and activities, and all three of its budget allocation
criteria for timber activities relate solely to the volume of timber
produced or offered. As a result, as forest officials told us, they
tend to focus on areas with high-value commercial timber rather than
on areas with high fire hazards.
A third barrier is that the Forest Service's contracting procedures
do not facilitate the removal of the large volumes of low-value
material as is necessary to reduce accumulated fuels. Most of the
trees that need to be removed to reduce accumulated fuels are small
in diameter and have little or no commercial value. For example, to
return experimental forest plots near Flagstaff, Arizona to
historical conditions, 37 tons per acre of nonmarketable materials
had to be disposed of by placing them in a pit and burning them.
However, the agency's contracting procedures for commercial timber
sales--as well as for service contracts that do not involve selling
timber but are let simply for the service of removing excess
fuels--were not designed to (1) facilitate the systematic removal of
large volumes of low-value material over a number of years, (2)
readily combine funds for conducting timber sales with funds for
reducing accumulated fuels, or (3) allow contractors to retain this
low-value material to partially offset the costs of its removal. In
1998, for instance, Agriculture's Office of General Counsel
determined that only 6 of 23 contracting demonstration projects
proposed by the Forest Service to demonstrate the role of timber
harvesting in reducing accumulated fuels could proceed under the
agency's existing statutory authority. This was because remaining
projects would have involved removing more material of minor
commercial value than is allowed under service contracts or letting
contractors keep some material in exchange for removing it. In the
fiscal year 1999 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, the
Congress authorized the Forest Service, through fiscal year 2002, to
enter into 28 individual project contracts under which (1) the value
of the material removed may be used by the contractor to offset the
costs of removal, and (2) there is no limitation on the value of the
material to be removed. However, more general authority temporarily
granted to the agency in the early 1990s to enter into "land
stewardship contracts"--under which contractors were allowed to
retain material they removed in exchange for achieving desired
conditions in the national forests--has not been renewed.\8
The fourth barrier that must be overcome in developing a cohesive
strategy for undertaking effective fuel reduction efforts is their
high cost. Revenue generated by the sale of many excess fuel
materials will not cover the costs of their removal. Agency
officials and outside analysts agree that reducing accumulated fuels
in the interior West may require hundreds of millions of dollars a
year in appropriated funds. Our preliminary analysis of the Forest
Service's fuels reduction costs--which, according to the agency's
data, average about $320 per acre for the combination of burning and
mechanical removal that is necessary in the interior West--indicates
that as much as $12 billion, or about $725 million a year, may be
needed to treat the 39 million acres at high risk of uncontrollable
wildfire by the end of fiscal year 2015. These costs might be less
if the agency reduced current hazards on the 39 million acres
selectively, in accordance with a strategy or set of priorities.
Currently, however, the agency is planning to spend only $65 million
for fiscal year 1999 to reduce accumulated fuels--or less than
one-tenth of the annual level that may be needed to accomplish the
agency's goal·and it has not developed an identifiable strategy or
priorities for applying these funds, nor has it even identified the
interface areas that are at high risk.
In conclusion, Madame Chairman, the increasing number of
uncontrollable and often catastrophic wildfires in the interior West,
as well as the significant costs to resolve the problem of increasing
hazards to human health, safety, property, and infrastructure present
difficult policy decisions for the Forest Service and the Congress:
Does the agency request, and does the Congress appropriate, the
hundreds of millions of dollars a year that may be required to fund
an aggressive fuel reduction program? If enough funding is not
appropriated, what priorities should be established? How can the
need for reintroducing fire into frequent fire forests and conducting
mechanical removals best be reconciled with the requirement to
maintain air quality standards and fulfill other stewardship
objectives? What changes in incentives and contracting procedures
are needed to facilitate the mechanical removal of low-value
materials?
Such decisions should be based on a sound strategy. However, the
Forest Service has not yet developed a cohesive strategy for
addressing several difficult barriers to improving the health of the
national forests by reducing fuels. Developing a strategy will
depend in large part on data being gathered under the Forest Service
and Interior's Joint Fire Science Program which, as noted earlier,
are directed at correcting these deficiencies. However, a Forest
Service official involved in implementing the program told us that
the agency may need a decade to complete many of the research
projects under the program. It may also take another decade or
longer to revise or amend forest plans to incorporate the program's
findings and begin implementing individual fuels reduction
activities. Many experts argue that the tinderbox that is now the
interior West cannot wait that long. They also believe that
inaction--or simply allowing nature to take its inevitable
course--will cost more not only in funds for fire suppression but
also in lives and damage to human health, property, and
infrastructure than would undertaking strategic actions now.
--------------------
\6 FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on
Appropriations, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (Feb.
1998).
\7 National Summary: Forest Management Program Report for Fiscal
Year1997, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, FS-627
(July 1998).
\8 See Forest Service Timber Sale Practices and Procedures: Analysis
of Alternative Systems, Congressional Research Service (95-1077 ENR,
Washington, D.C., 1995) and M. Mitsos, Improving Administrative
Flexibility and Efficiency in the National Forest Timber Sale
Program: Scoping Session Summary, Pinchot Institute (Washington,
D.C., 1996).
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3.1
Madam Chairman, this concludes our prepared statement. We will be
pleased to respond to any questions that you or Members of the
Subcommittee may have.
THE INTERIOR WEST
=========================================================== Appendix I
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Source: Forest Service.
LOCATION OF FREQUENT FIRE FORESTS
IN THE INTERIOR WEST
========================================================== Appendix II
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Source: Forest Service.
1909 PHOTOGRAPH OF TYPICAL OPEN
PONDEROSA PINE STAND IN THE
BITTERROOT NATIONAL FOREST IN
IDAHO
========================================================= Appendix III
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Source: Forest Service.
1989 PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN FROM THE
SAME SPOT IN THE BITTERROOT
NATIONAL FOREST IN THE SAME
DIRECTION
========================================================== Appendix IV
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Source: Forest Service.
NUMBER OF NATIONAL FOREST ACRES
BURNED BY FIRE, 1910-97
=========================================================== Appendix V
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Notes: 1. The number of acres represents the 10-year rolling
average at each point.
2. Since 1990, 90 percent of national forest acres burned by fire
were in the interior West.
Source: GAO's presentation of data from the Forest Service.
NUMBER OF AND TOTAL ACRES BURNED
BY LARGE WILDFIRES ON ALL NATIONAL
FORESTS, 1984-95
========================================================== Appendix VI
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Note: Since 1990, 91 percent of large fires, >1000 acres, and 96
percent of the acres burned were in the interior West.
Source: GAO's presentation of latest data available from the Forest
Service.
NATIONAL FOREST LANDS AT MEDIUM
AND HIGH RISK OF CATASTROPHIC FIRE
========================================================= Appendix VII
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Source: American Forests.
POPULATION GROWTH IN RELATION TO
NATIONAL FORESTS (1980-96)
======================================================== Appendix VIII
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Source: GAO's presentation of data from the Forest Service and the
Bureau of the Census.
FOREST SERVICE'S EXPENDITURES FOR
FIRE FIGHTING, FISCAL YEARS
1986-94
========================================================== Appendix IX
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Notes: 1. The expenditures for each year represent the 10-year
rolling average expressed in 1994 dollars.
2. Since 1990, 95 percent of these expenditures have been in the
interior West.
Source: GAO's presentation of latest data available from the Forest
Service.
FOREST SERVICE'S EXPENDITURES FOR
WILDFIRE PREPAREDNESS, FISCAL
YEARS 1992-97
=========================================================== Appendix X
(See figure in printed
edition.)
Note: For 1994, the last year figures by region were available, over
90 percent of these expenditures were in the interior West.
Source: GAO.
*** End of document. ***