With the number and severity
of wildfires increasing dramatically, it’s time to rethink management
policies for our national forest system.
A new study by the American Geophysical Union, for instance, found that serious wildfires in the American West have been increasing significantly over the last 30 years, with the total number of acres destroyed increasing an average of 90,000 per year from 1984 to 2011.
A new study by the American Geophysical Union, for instance, found that serious wildfires in the American West have been increasing significantly over the last 30 years, with the total number of acres destroyed increasing an average of 90,000 per year from 1984 to 2011.
In 2013 alone,
according to government estimates, 4.2 million acres of U.S. forest
lands were destroyed by wildfires, an area seven times larger than New
York City and Los Angeles combined. The fires claimed lands managed by
the U.S. Forest Service in 37 states.
The American
Geophysical Union attributes the dramatic increase in wildfires to
several possible factors, including climate change, an increase in
invasive species, and what one member describes as “past fire management
practices.”
The greatest blame for faulty fire
management practices lies squarely with the U.S. Forest Service, which
has helped turn many national forests into literal tinderboxes.
The
agency understands it has problems. In a 2002 report, the Forest
Service lamented that it was operating “within a statutory, regulatory
and administrative framework that has kept the agency from effectively
addressing rapid declines in forest health.”
Desperate
for improvement, Congress in 2009 enacted the ironically named Federal
Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or FLAME, requiring the
secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to develop a “National Cohesive
Wildland Fire Management Strategy.” The report was finalized April 9,
2014, nearly four years after its statutory deadline.
Like
other past reform efforts, the new fire management strategy fails to
come to terms with the statutory, regulatory and procedural quagmire
that now exists.
Rather than trying to comprehensively
fix all of the problems plaguing the Forest Service, whose 35,000
employees manage approximately 10 percent of all land in the United
States, what’s needed is a new management model — the type public
education reformers have been experimenting with. Like charter schools,
we need “charter forests.”
The secret is local management autonomy: We need to apply that management model to the U.S. Forest Service.
A
decentralized charter forest would operate under the control of a local
board of directors, which might include local government officials,
economists, environmentalists, and recreational and commercial users of
forest resources. They would have wide freedom to hire and fire
employees, bypassing usual civil service procedures.
Like
charter schools, which receive public support based on the number of
students enrolled, charter forests would receive federal funds to
support their operations based on a forest’s size, ways in which it is
used, past federal spending for the forest, and other appropriate
criteria.
Charter forests would be exempt from current
requirements for public land use planning and the writing of
environmental impact statements. These requirements long ago ceased to
perform their ostensible function of improving public land decision
making and instead have become open invitations to litigation —
effectively transferring much of the management control over our
national forests to litigants and federal judges.
Charter
forests would operate under federal oversight, including broad land use
goals and performance standards relating to environmental quality. But
they would have the flexibility to develop and implement innovative
solutions to the growing health problems that threaten many national
forests.
It’s time to give a new management model a try.
If not, we may find the destructive pattern of the past 30 years
continue for another 30.
Robert Nelson,
a senior fellow with The Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif., is
professor of environmental policy at the School of Public Policy of the
University of Maryland and author, most recently, of The New Holy Wars:
Economic Religion versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary
America.”
Billings Gazette
