http://www.ti.org/fire.html

The West Is Burning!
New: The Thoreau Institute's comments on President Bush's "Healthy Forests
Initiative": It will cost billions, but it won't stop fires
Once again, large forest fires are covering the national forests and other
federal lands in the West -- and everyone knows it is because past Forest
Service fire suppression policies have led to a dangerous accumulation of
fuels. That's why Congress is giving the Forest Service and other agencies $400
million a year to treat hazardous fuels -- twenty times the amount they spent a
decade ago.

That's also why the Forest Service continues to suppress 99.7 percent of all
fires. Even though everyone knows it should let more fires burn, built-up fuels
are so dangerous that it doesn't dare let fires burn. So Congress has more than
doubled the budgets for fire preparedness (such as having firefighters on
standby) and firefighting.

But is the story about hazardous fuels true? Thoreau Institute researcher
Randal O'Toole spent a year reviewing data about scores of recent fires and
couldn't find any evidence that hazardous fuels are responsible for those
fires, firefighter fatalities, or increased fire suppression costs. Instead,
droughts are the cause of the fires, new technologies and an aging workforce
are the causes of increased firefighter fatalities, and perverse incentives to
waste money are the main cause of increased firefighting costs.

Nor is it true that a scientifically managed program of prescribed fire will
reduce future fires and firefighting costs in the West. Unlike the Southeast,
where most forests are ecologically adapted to frequent, low-intensity fires,
most forests of the West are adapted to infrequent, high-intensity fires. The
West has always had big fires and it always will have them.

This means that the $2.9 billion a year that Congress is dumping on federal
fire programs is mostly wasted. Naturally, the Forest Service perpetuates the
hazardous fuels myth so that it can get those funds. But the long-term solution
to fire problems is to spend less money, not more.

All of this information is detailed in a new, 53-page report published by the
Thoreau Institute. You can download any of several versions of the report
below.

Full report in Acrobat (pdf) format (1.3 MB)
Full text (36,000 words) of the report with no graphics in Word (.doc) format
(300 KB)
Short version (3,600 words) of the report in html format (23 KB)
Op-ed-length (800 words) version of the report in html format (6 KB)
A short paper on drought, with access to data showing the strong correlation
between drought and acres burned

The Thoreau Institute