'Borrowing' diverts funds to firefighting

Some Forest Service funds frozen in case of wildfires

An increase in the costs of fighting wildfires nationwide has trickled down into the ability of agencies in Arkansas to survey and manage forests in the state.

The local effect is called "fire borrowing," which refers to programs designed to survey forests or prevent fires sometimes having money withheld from them to fight fires elsewhere.

The development comes at a time when parts of the state are facing an increased risk of fires. Due to dry conditions, 27 counties in the south and central parts of the state are under burn bans, including Pulaski, Saline and Faulkner counties.

A U.S. Forest Service report released Aug. 5 detailed an increase in costs of wildfires nationally, from 16 percent of the agency's budget in 1995 to 55 percent of the agency's budget in 2015.

The report also cites climate change as a factor in wildfire issues, noting wildfire seasons are lasting 78 days longer on average than they did in the 1970s.

Officials with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Weather Service in Arkansas note that the wildfire problem is mainly out west, where drought is worse.

But budgeting uncertainty related to those higher costs has led the U.S. Forest Service to withhold money from programs in Arkansas.

Arkansas Forester Joe Fox said the state has not had to cancel any programs but that portions of funding for certain programs are frozen in case of wildfires. Those programs include surveys of forest land and forest stewardship, which helps landowners in consulting professionals and obtaining forest management plans.

Forest management plans deal with forest health, prescribed fires and timber sales, among other things.

"Today in 2015, we're getting in Arkansas from the U.S. Forest Service about 85 percent of what we were getting six to seven years ago," Fox said.

Fox said the Arkansas Forestry Commission is doing less stewardship work now than it was in 2008.

The Arkansas Forestry Commission is not a subsidiary of the U.S. Forest Service but receives 19 percent of its funds from the agency. The commission oversees 16.3 million of the 19 million acres of forest in the state. The rest is overseen by federal agents locally.

At the U.S. Forest Service's post in Arkansas, no programs were canceled because of a lack of funds in 2014 and none have been canceled yet in 2015, spokesman Terence Peck said.

But four programs were canceled in 2013, including installing airlock doors to protect against white-nose syndrome in bats at Blanchard Springs Caverns and funding for environmental assessments required for well-drilling permits. One was canceled in 2012.

"A lot of times the work you're doing stops," Peck said.

The impact locally of wildfires nationally is a growing trend, Fox said.

"The fire borrowing by the U.S. Forest Service has now been with us for several years," he said. "It's getting worse and worse."

Fox said he believes some help could come from bills in Congress designed to create healthier forests that would be less prone to fires, including one from U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark.

Westerman, who has worked as a forester and has a degree in forestry from Yale University, has proposed a bill designed to reduce the chances of wildfires by streamlining environmental analyses and discouraging litigation related to forest management plans.

It would also change federal law so that major wildfires on federal lands would be eligible for federal disaster funding, curbing fire borrowing.

The bill, HR 2647, has passed the U.S. House.

Another bill, introduced by several U.S. senators, would also change wildfire funding to be similar to disaster funding, reducing the money taken from other Forest Service programs to fight fires.

Metro on 08/17/2015

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