Forest Service signs agreement with itself

An intra-agency agreement within the U.S. Forest Service has provided much needed resources to the Gila National Forest during the extreme fire season that the southwest is experiencing this year. "Out-of-state resources are giving the Gila National Forest a necessary boost of experienced firefighters and equipment," said Gabe Holguin, forest fire management officer. Besides providing assistance in fighting fires, the agreement with the Northern Region - which encompasses North Idaho and Montana - allows firefighters to assist in fire prevention and public contact. Since the fire seasons in the two regions are offset, sharing resources is complementary and doesn't impede either agency's fire fighting capabilities. Informal sharing has occurred since 2001, but was formalized in 2007 with the agreement...more

So one region of the Forest Service is sharing firefighters with another region.

This means the Forest Service has signed an agreement with itself to allocate resources in an efficient and effective manner. Doing it in an "informal" manner is not acceptable in government, thus the "intra-agency agreement."

At first I was having a good laugh at this. After all, this is the kind of common sense decision that is made privately in the market place thousands of times a day. But, what the FS is doing is good public policy even if their method of setting the policy seems funny. So, what we really need is more "intra-agency agreement(s)" across the federal behemoth.

Send Smokey out to promote IAA's everywhere. Remember, "Only you can stop waste and inefficiency."

Arizona congressman Paul Gozar recently testified:

In total, over a million acres of Forest Service lands have burned in the American Southwest, as well as another 600,000 acres of federal, state, and private lands. The fires are costing millions of dollars in immediate fire response and will cost many millions more in restoration and rehabilitation in the months and years ahead.

The five largest wildfires, Rodeo in 2002, Cave Creek in 2005, Willow in 2004, Aspen in 2003, and now the current Wallow Fire have all occurred in the last ten years. Prior to 1990, the largest fire was the Carrizo fire in 1970 which burned just 57,000 acres. The frequency of fires, and the magnitude of the acreage burned, has exponentially increased since 1990.

And New Mexico's Forestry Division recently reported to a legislative committee:

As of the morning of June 30, Delfin told lawmakers that the Forestry Division had battled 1,021 fires in fiscal year 2011 and that 756,249 acres had burned across the state, engulfing 100 structures and 40 homes.

We need more than IAA's. We need a complete change in management philosophy.

See Katie Pavlich's nationally syndicated column here where she quotes 90 year old Emil Kiehne's letter to Gary.