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Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, 
Committee on Resources, House of Representatives: 

January 2005: 

Wildland Fire Management: 

Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a 
Cohesive Strategy: 

[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-147] 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-05-147, a report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on 
Forests and Forest Health, Committee on Resources, House of 
Representatives: 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

Over the past two decades, the number of acres burned by wildland fires 
has surged, often threatening human lives, property, and ecosystems. 
Past management practices, including a concerted federal policy in the 
20th century of suppressing fires to protect communities and ecosystem 
resources, unintentionally resulted in steady accumulation of dense 
vegetation that fuels large, intense, wildland fires. While such fires 
are normal in some ecosystems, in others they can cause catastrophic 
damage to resources as well as to communities near wildlands known as 
the wildland-urban interface.

In 1999, GAO recommended that the Forest Service develop a cohesive 
strategy for responding to wildland fire threats. As a follow-up, 5 
years later, GAO was asked to identify the (1) progress the federal 
government has made in responding to wildland fire threats and (2) 
challenges it will need to address within the next 5 years. 

What GAO Found: 

Over the last 5 years, the Forest Service in the Department of 
Agriculture and land management agencies in the Department of the 
Interior, working with the Congress, have made important progress in 
responding to wildland fires. The agencies have adopted various 
national strategy documents addressing the need to reduce wildland fire 
risks; established a priority for protecting communities in the 
wildland-urban interface; and increased efforts and amounts of funding 
committed to addressing wildland fire problems, including preparedness, 
suppression, and fuel reduction on federal lands. In addition, the 
agencies have begun improving their data and research on wildland fire 
problems, made progress in developing long-needed fire management plans 
that identify actions for effectively addressing wildland fire threats 
at the local level, and improved federal interagency coordination and 
collaboration with nonfederal partners. The agencies also have 
strengthened overall accountability for their investments in wildland 
fire activities by establishing improved performance measures and a 
framework for monitoring results. 

While the agencies have adopted various strategy documents to address 
the nation’s wildland fire problems, none of these documents 
constitutes a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the long-
term options and related funding needed to reduce fuels in national 
forests and rangelands and to respond to wildland fire threats. Both 
the agencies and the Congress need a comprehensive assessment of the 
fuel reduction options and related funding needs to determine the most 
effective and affordable long-term approach for addressing wildland 
fire problems. Completing a cohesive strategy that identifies long-term 
options and needed funding will require finishing several efforts now 
under way, each with its own challenges. The agencies will need to 
finish planned improvements in a key data and modeling system—LANDFIRE—
to more precisely identify the extent and location of wildland fire 
threats and to better target fuel reduction efforts. In implementing 
LANDFIRE, the agencies will need more consistent approaches to 
assessing wildland fire risks, more integrated information systems, and 
better understanding of the role of climate in wildland fire. In 
addition, local fire management plans will need to be updated with data 
from LANDFIRE and from emerging agency research on more cost-effective 
approaches to reducing fuels. Completing a new system designed to 
identify the most cost-effective means for allocating fire management 
budget resources—Fire Program Analysis¾may help to better identify 
long-term options and related funding needs. Without completing these 
tasks, the agencies will have difficulty determining the extent and 
location of wildland fire threats, targeting and coordinating their 
efforts and resources, and resolving wildland fire problems in the most 
timely and cost-effective manner over the long term. 

What GAO Recommends: 

GAO recommends that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior 
provide the Congress with a plan outlining the critical steps and time 
frames for completing a cohesive strategy that identifies the options 
and funding needed to address wildland fire problems.

Commenting on the draft report, the Forest Service and Interior 
generally agreed with GAO’s findings and recommendation.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-147.

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on 
the link above. For more information, contact Robin M. Nazzaro at (202) 
512-3841 or nazzaror@gao.gov.

[End of section]

Contents: 

Letter: 

Results in Brief: 

Background: 

Important Progress Has Been Made in Addressing Federal Wildland Fire 
Management Problems over the Last 5 Years: 

Agencies Face Several Challenges to Completing a Long-Needed Cohesive 
Strategy for Reducing Fuels and Responding to Wildland Fire Problems: 

Conclusions: 

Recommendation for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

Appendixes: 

Appendix I: GAO Products Related to Federal Wildland Fire Management: 

Appendix II: Scope and Methodology: 

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Agriculture: 

GAO Comments: 

Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of the Interior: 

GAO Comments: 

Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contacts: 

Staff Acknowledgments: 

Table: 

Table 1: Appropriations to Wildland Fire Management Accounts, Fiscal 
Years 1999 through 2005: 

Figure: 

Figure 1: Average Number of Acres Burned Annually by Wildland Fire in 
Each Decade Since 1970: 

Abbreviations: 

FPA: Fire Program Analysis: 

Letter January 14, 2005: 

The Honorable Greg Walden: 
Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health: 
Committee on Resources: 
House of Representatives: 

Dear Mr. Chairman: 

The national trend in recent years of increasing wildland fire threats 
to communities and ecosystems has been continuing. The average number 
of acres burned by wildland fires annually from 2000 through 2003 was 
56 percent greater than the average amount burned annually during the 
1990s. While an increase in wildland fires may often be necessary to 
restore ecosystems, some fires also can cause catastrophic damages to 
communities and ecosystems. Experts believe that catastrophic damages 
from wildland fires likely will continue to increase until an adequate 
long-term federal response, coordinated with others, is implemented and 
has had time to take effect. In this context, you asked us to report on 
the progress that the federal government has made over the last 5 years 
and the key challenges it faces in developing and implementing a 
response to wildland fire problems.

This report is primarily based on over 25 reviews dealing with federal 
wildland fire issues that we have conducted in recent years. (App. I 
lists our reports and testimonies on these reviews.) These reviews 
focused largely on the activities of the Forest Service in the 
Department of Agriculture and the land management agencies in the 
Department of the Interior,which together manage over 95 percent of all 
federal lands.[Footnote 1] We also interviewed officials and obtained 
data from the Forest Service, Interior, Congressional Research Service, 
Brookings Institution, and National Academy of Public Administration. 
Appendix II contains a more complete description of our methodology. We 
conducted our work between May and November 2004 in accordance with 
generally accepted government auditing standards.

Results in Brief: 

In the past 5 years, the federal government has made important progress 
in putting into place the basic components of a framework for managing 
and responding to the nation's wildland fire problems, including: 

* establishing a priority to protect communities near wildlands--the 
wildland-urban interface;

* increasing the amount of effort and funds available for addressing 
wildland fire issues, such as fuel reduction on federal lands;

* improving data and research on wildland fire, local fire management 
plans, interagency coordination, and collaboration with nonfederal 
partners; and: 

* refining its performance measures and results monitoring for wildland 
fire management.

While the federal government has made important progress to date, many 
challenges lie ahead for addressing the wildland fire problem in a 
timely and effective manner. Most notably, the land management agencies 
need to complete and refine a cohesive strategy that identifies the 
long-term options and related funding needed to reduce fuels and 
respond to the nation's wildland fire problems. The agencies and the 
Congress need such a strategy to help make decisions about an effective 
and affordable long-term approach for addressing problems that have 
been decades in the making and will take decades more to resolve. 
However, to complete and begin implementing such a strategy, the 
agencies must complete several tasks, each with its own challenges, 
including: 

* finishing data systems needed to identify the extent, severity, and 
location of wildland fire threats to our national forests and 
rangelands;

* updating local fire management plans to better specify the actions 
needed to effectively address these threats; and: 

* identifying long-term implementation options and related funding 
needed to respond to the wildland fire problems.

Recently, the land management agencies initiated a new wildland fire 
strategic planning effort that might provide a useful framework for 
developing a cohesive strategy that includes long-term options and 
related funding needed to reduce and maintain fuels at acceptable 
levels and respond to the nation's wildland fire problems.

We are recommending that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the 
Interior provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of the 
agencies' fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management budgets, with a 
joint tactical plan outlining the critical steps the agencies will 
take, together with related time frames, to complete a cohesive 
strategy that identifies long-term options and needed funding for 
reducing and maintaining fuels at acceptable levels and responding to 
the nation's wildland fire problems. In responding to a draft of this 
report, the Forest Service, commenting on behalf of Agriculture, and 
Interior generally agreed with our findings and recommendation. 
However, both departments expressed concern about their ability to 
provide the recommended joint tactical plan in time for the Congress's 
consideration of their fiscal year 2006 budget requests. The Forest 
Service's and Interior's comment letters are included in appendixes III 
and IV, respectively.

Background: 

Wildland fire triggered by lightning is a natural, inevitable, and 
necessary ecological process. Such fires periodically consume excess 
vegetation and renew the productivity of our nation's ecosystems. 
However, in ecosystems that are adapted to frequent small, low-
intensity fires, uncharacteristically large and intense wildland fires 
increasingly threaten catastrophic damage to such ecosystems. Large 
intense fires in these and other ecosystems also increasingly threaten 
human lives, health, property, and infrastructure in the wildland-urban 
interface.

Uncharacteristically large, intense fires often are fueled by 
abnormally dense accumulations of vegetation in many forest and 
rangeland ecosystems. This excess vegetation is the result of several 
human land use and management practices, including several decades of 
effective fire suppression activities that have reduced the normal 
frequency of wildland fires that nature had periodically used to clear 
undergrowth and small trees. This vegetation, in turn, provides 
abnormally large amounts of fuel for fires, causing some to spread more 
rapidly, burn larger areas, and burn more intensely than normal. Such 
uncharacteristic fires are more common in warmer, drier climates such 
as the interior western United States and during periods of drought. 
Federal researchers estimate that these vegetative conditions exist on 
approximately 190 million acres (or more than 40 percent) of federal 
lands in the contiguous United States, but could vary from 90 million 
to 200 million acres, and that these conditions also exist on many 
nonfederal lands.

Wildland Fire Has Continued to Increase in Recent Years: 

The acreage burned by wildland fire--after having declined nationally 
throughout most of the 20th century due to land management practices, 
including fire suppression--increased in the latter decades of the 
century. This increase was the result of more large fires, most of 
which were located in the inland western United States, where many of 
the forests historically had frequent, smaller, and less intense fires. 
The trend toward increased acreage burned by wildland fire has 
continued into the 21st century as illustrated in figure 1. For 2000 
through 2003, the average number of acres burned annually on all lands 
nationally was 56 percent greater than the average acres burned 
annually during the 1990s.

Figure 1: Average Number of Acres Burned Annually by Wildland Fire in 
Each Decade Since 1970: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

Increases in Wildland Fire Exposed Weaknesses in the Federal Response: 

Our reviews over the last 5 years identified several weaknesses in the 
federal government's management response to wildland fire. 
Specifically, we found that the land management agencies lacked an 
effective national strategy to respond to wildland fire, had 
shortcomings in addressing wildland fire issues at the local level, and 
had an ineffective system for accounting for wildland fire management 
efforts and monitoring results.

We noted in a 1999 report that the federal government lacked a national 
strategy for reducing excessive national forest fuel levels and 
associated catastrophic wildland fires.[Footnote 2] Such a strategy was 
needed by the agencies to address numerous policy, programmatic, and 
budgetary factors that presented significant barriers to accomplishing 
fuel reduction goals. Among these barriers were program incentives that 
tended to focus on areas that may not present the greatest wildland 
fire hazards and very high costs for removing hazardous fuels. We also 
reported in 2003 that the Forest Service and Interior had issued 
national guidance on fuel reduction, but it was not specific enough for 
prioritizing fuels reduction projects.[Footnote 3] Lacking such 
guidance, agencies could not ensure that local land management units 
were implementing the highest-priority fuels reduction projects 
nationwide.

Our reviews also found shortcomings in the federal government's 
implementation at the local level of various wildland fire management 
activities, such as preparedness, suppression, and 
rehabilitation.[Footnote 4] Over half of all local federal land 
management units had no fire management plans that met the requirements 
of the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. This national 
policy, jointly adopted by Agriculture and Interior and updated in 
2001, established a goal to restore fire's natural role in ecosystems 
consistent with human health and safety. The fire management plans are 
intended to help ensure the effective integration of local wildland 
fire management activities with planned uses of agencies' lands so that 
unwanted wildland fire does not impair accomplishment of desired future 
conditions on these lands. The Forest Service and Interior also lacked 
basic data, such as the amount and location of lands needing fuel 
reduction, and research on the effectiveness of different fuel 
reduction methods on which to base their fire management plans and 
specific project decisions. Furthermore, coordination among federal 
agencies and collaboration of these agencies with nonfederal entities 
were ineffective. Such coordination and collaboration are needed 
because wildland fire is a shared problem that transcends land 
ownership and administrative boundaries, requiring cooperation among 
all parties.[Footnote 5]

Finally, we found that better accountability in federal wildland fire 
management efforts was needed. Although the agencies had begun 
developing results-oriented performance measures to assess the 
effectiveness of treatments in reducing the risk of catastrophic 
wildland fires, they had no baseline from which to assess program 
performance. They also could not establish any meaningful performance 
measure and goal for reducing fuels because they lacked sufficient data 
on the location of lands at high risk of catastrophic fires as well as 
data on the cost-effectiveness of fuel reduction methods and their 
effects on other ecosystem resources. In particular, the agencies 
needed to develop performance measures that would focus their actions 
on reducing priority hazards and to better monitor the results of those 
actions.[Footnote 6]

Important Progress Has Been Made in Addressing Federal Wildland Fire 
Management Problems over the Last 5 Years: 

The federal government has made important progress over the last 5 
years in improving its management of wildland fire. Nationally, it has 
worked to formulate a comprehensive strategy, established a priority to 
protect communities in the wildland-urban interface, and increased 
funding for wildland fire management activities, including fuels 
reduction and suppression. At the local level, it enhanced its data and 
research on wildland fire problems, made significant progress in 
developing local fire management plans, and improved coordination among 
federal agencies and collaboration with nonfederal partners. In 
addition, it strengthened its overall accountability for investments in 
wildland fire activities by establishing more meaningful goals and 
performance measures.

Progress in National Strategy: Priorities Have Been Clarified and 
Funding Has Been Increased for Identified Needs: 

Over the last 5 years, the federal government has been formulating a 
strategy known as the National Fire Plan, clarifying its priorities and 
increasing funding for wildland fire management activities. The 
National Fire Plan is not a single document. Rather, it is composed of 
several strategic documents that set forth a priority to reduce 
wildland fire risks to communities.[Footnote 7] To address this 
priority, the agencies, working with the states, identified a list of 
communities nationwide that are considered most at risk of wildland 
fire damage. While the recently enacted Healthy Forests Restoration Act 
of 2003 addresses risks to both communities and ecosystems, it 
emphasizes a priority for protecting wildland-urban interface 
communities by directing that at least 50 percent of funding for fuel 
reduction projects authorized under the act be allocated to wildland-
urban interface areas.[Footnote 8] Although we have raised concerns 
about how the agencies have defined these interface areas, the accuracy 
and process they used in designating these communities and wildland-
urban interface areas, and the specificity of their prioritization 
guidance, the act's clarification of the priority for protecting 
communities provides a starting point for identifying and prioritizing 
funding needs.[Footnote 9]

Forest Service and Interior appropriations for fuel reductions, as well 
as for other wildland fire management activities such as preparedness 
and suppression, have increased substantially over the past 5 years. In 
1999, the Forest Service had not requested increased funding to meet 
the growing fuel reduction needs it had identified.[Footnote 10] As 
shown in table 1, overall appropriations for wildland fire management 
activities for both the Forest Service and Interior have nearly tripled 
in the past 5 years, from about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to over 
$2.7 billion in fiscal year 2004. While these increases include 
significant amounts for unanticipated suppression costs and 
preparedness funding, fuel reduction funding has quadrupled since 1999.

Table 1: Appropriations to Wildland Fire Management Accounts, Fiscal 
Years 1999 through 2005 (million of dollars): 

Fuel reduction; 
Fiscal year 1999: $98.8; 
Fiscal year 2000: $117.0; 
Fiscal year 2001: $400.1; 
Fiscal year 2002: $395.2; 
Fiscal year 2003: $422.3; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $442.2; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $475.5.

Preparedness; 
Fiscal year 1999: $522.7; 
Fiscal year 2000: $561.3; 
Fiscal year 2001: $887.9; 
Fiscal year 2002: $875.7; 
Fiscal year 2003: $867.2; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $925.8; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $920.9.

Suppression; 
Fiscal year 1999: $276.8; 
Fiscal year 2000: $297.3; 
Fiscal year 2001: $472.4; 
Fiscal year 2002: $382.7; 
Fiscal year 2003: $577.3; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $790; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $906.9.

Emergency funds; 
Fiscal year 1999: $152.0; 
Fiscal year 2000: $590.0; 
Fiscal year 2001: $624.6; 
Fiscal year 2002: $320.0; 
Fiscal year 2003: $1114.0; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $397.6; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $0.0.

Site rehabilitation; 
Fiscal year 1999: $0.0; 
Fiscal year 2000: $20.0; 
Fiscal year 2001: $246.6; 
Fiscal year 2002: $82.7; 
Fiscal year 2003: $26.9; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $31.1; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $27.3.

Nonfederal land protection; 
Fiscal year 1999: $0.0; 
Fiscal year 2000: $0.0; 
Fiscal year 2001: $118.5; 
Fiscal year 2002: $87.1; 
Fiscal year 2003: $89.3; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $69.1; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $47.2.

Other fire management appropriations[A]; 
Fiscal year 1999: $9.0; 
Fiscal year 2000: $13.3; 
Fiscal year 2001: $109.8; 
Fiscal year 2002: $95.4; 
Fiscal year 2003: $68.1; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $74.7; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $60.4.

Total[B]; 
Fiscal year 1999: $1,059.3; 
Fiscal year 2000: $1,598.9; 
Fiscal year 2001: $2,859.9; 
Fiscal year 2002: $2,238.8; 
Fiscal year 2003: $3,165.1; 
Fiscal year 2004 (enacted): $2,730.6; 
Fiscal year 2005 (requested): $2,438.2. 

Source: Congressional Research Service.

[A] Includes appropriations for research, fire facilities, and forest 
health.

[B] Figures may not add because of rounding.

[End of table]

Additionally, through the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, the 
Congress authorized $760 million per year to be appropriated for 
hazardous fuels reduction activities, including projects for reducing 
fuels on up to 20 million acres of land.

Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research, Fire Management 
Planning, and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been Strengthened: 

The federal government also has improved the implementation of its 
wildland fire management activities at the local level. In particular, 
significant improvements in federal data and research on wildland fires 
have been made during the past 5 years. In 1999, the federal government 
lacked adequate data on the location and extent of hazardous fuels to 
use in selecting and designing fuel reduction projects.[Footnote 11] 
Since then, the agencies have jointly completed a mapping of fuels 
nationwide that classifies lands by differing fuel hazard levels. 
Although this mapping is not done at a small enough geographic scale to 
support decisions on the location and design of individual fuel 
reduction projects, it nevertheless represents a significant 
improvement over the information that was available in the past.

In 2003, Agriculture and Interior approved funding for development of a 
geospatial data and modeling system, called LANDFIRE, to identify 
wildland fire hazards with more precision and uniformity than the 
existing hazardous fuels mapping and to enable comparisons of 
conditions between different field locations nationwide. When 
operational, LANDFIRE data and enhanced models of likely fire behavior 
thus will help identify the nature and magnitude of the wildland fire 
risks confronting numerous community and ecosystem resources, such as 
residential and commercial structures, species habitat, air and water 
quality, and soils. The agencies plan to use this information to better 
support their strategic decisions on preparedness, suppression, the 
location and design of fuel reduction projects, and other land 
management activities. Initial results from LANDFIRE have been 
promising. For example, a Forest Service official, who had used 
LANDFIRE to choose an approach for suppressing a fire in an area of 
Montana where the prototype system was developed, said he found it much 
better at identifying suppression options and their consequences than 
any other currently available data. LANDFIRE--estimated to cost $40 
million--is scheduled for nationwide implementation in 2009.

Local fire management planning also has been strengthened. As we 
reported in 2002, over half of the agencies' land management units had 
not completed local fire management plans in accordance with the 1995 
federal wildland fire management policy.[Footnote 12] They subsequently 
adopted an expedited schedule to complete all of these plans in 2004, 
and agency officials told us that they believed they would meet this 
schedule. The agencies also adopted a common interagency template for 
preparing these plans to ensure greater consistency in their contents.

Other critical improvements have been made in coordination among 
federal agencies responsible for wildland fire management and in 
collaboration with nonfederal partners.[Footnote 13] In 2001, as a 
result of congressional direction to the agencies to involve the states 
as full partners in their efforts, Agriculture and Interior jointly 
adopted a 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy with the Western Governors 
Association.[Footnote 14] This strategy, and an implementation plan 
adopted in 2002, detail goals, time lines, and responsibilities of the 
different parties for various actions related to a wide range of 
activities, including collaboration at the local level to identify fuel 
reduction priorities in different areas. Also, in 2002, the agencies 
established an interagency organizational body, the Wildland Fire 
Leadership Council, to improve coordination of their activities with 
each other and with nonfederal parties. The council is composed of 
senior Agriculture and Interior officials and nonfederal 
representatives. The council meets regularly to provide policy 
direction on a wide range of issues and decisions to foster necessary 
coordination and consistency among federal approaches, activities, and 
funding of various efforts.

Progress in Accountability: Better Performance Measures and a Results 
Monitoring Framework Have Been Developed: 

The federal government also made progress in accounting for the results 
it achieves from its investments in wildland fire management 
activities. In 1999, the Forest Service's performance measure for fuel 
reductions, which measured only the total acres of fuel reductions 
accomplished, created an incentive to treat less costly acres rather 
than the acres that presented the greatest hazards.[Footnote 15] To 
rectify this shortcoming, the agencies adopted a performance measure 
that identifies the amount of acres moved from high-hazard to low-
hazard fuel conditions. This measure will allow them to better 
determine the extent to which their fuel reduction efforts accomplish 
the key goal of reducing risks to communities and ecosystems.

The agencies also made progress in developing a system to monitor the 
effects of wildland fires. Without such information, they cannot 
determine the nature of threats or the likely effectiveness of 
different actions taken to address threats. In May 2004, the Wildland 
Fire Leadership Council approved a nationwide monitoring framework for 
wildland fire data, including data on fire severity that may help 
address this problem. While we also have said that an implementation 
plan for this monitoring framework is needed, the adoption of the 
framework nonetheless represents a critical step toward enhancing 
wildland fire management accountability for results.[Footnote 16]

Agencies Face Several Challenges to Completing a Long-Needed Cohesive 
Strategy for Reducing Fuels and Responding to Wildland Fire Problems: 

While federal land management agencies have made important progress 
over the past 5 years in addressing wildland fire management issues, 
they continue to face a number of challenges that will need to be met 
if they are to complete development of a cohesive strategy that 
explicitly identifies available long-term options and funding needed to 
reduce fuels on national forests and rangelands and respond to the 
nation's wildland fire threats. The nation's wildland fire problems 
have been decades in the making and will take decades more to resolve. 
Without a cohesive strategy and better data, agencies will have 
difficulty determining the extent and severity of the wildland fire 
problem, targeting and coordinating their efforts and resources, and 
resolving the problem in a timely and cost-effective manner. Moreover, 
without such a strategy and better data, the Congress will not have 
reliable information on when, how, and at what cost wildland fire 
problems can be brought under control.

The federal government's strategy documents adopted thus far, such as 
those associated with the National Fire Plan, establish a good 
framework for addressing our nation's wildland fire problems, but these 
documents still need to identify the long-term options and funding 
needed to reduce and maintain fuels at acceptable levels. A clear 
understanding of the options and funding needs are essential to both 
the agencies and the Congress for determining the most effective and 
affordable approach. However, the agencies are not currently in a 
position to develop these options and identify related funding needs 
with any precision or reliability because they need to complete several 
steps, each with its own challenges. These steps include (1) completing 
and implementing the LANDFIRE data and modeling system so that the 
extent and location of wildland fire threats are more precisely known, 
(2) updating local fire management plans with more precise LANDFIRE 
information and the latest research so that the most promising wildland 
fire management practices are included to effectively address wildland 
fire threats, and (3) based on these plans, identifying the various 
national options and related funding needed to reduce fuels and respond 
to wildland fire threats. Recently, the agencies began an assessment of 
wildland fire threats that may provide a useful framework for 
completing a long-needed cohesive wildland fire management strategy.

Completing and Implementing the LANDFIRE System Is Essential to 
Identifying and Addressing Wildland Fire Threats: 

LANDFIRE is critical to identifying and addressing wildland fire 
threats to communities and ecosystems, but the agencies face several 
challenges completing and implementing LANDFIRE. The agencies need 
LANDFIRE to more precisely identify the extent and location of wildland 
fire threats and better target fuel reduction efforts. LANDFIRE is also 
needed to better reconcile the effects of fuel reduction activities 
with the agencies' other stewardship responsibilities for protecting 
ecosystem resources, such as air, water, soils, and species habitat. 
Fuel reduction activities, such as controlled burning or mechanical 
treatments (using chainsaws and heavy equipment), can adversely affect 
these ecosystem resources if not done at the proper time and place. For 
example, mechanically removing fuels with heavy equipment can adversely 
affect wildlife habitat and water quality in many areas and controlled 
burning can cause air quality problems. The agencies also need LANDFIRE 
to help them better measure and assess their performance. For example, 
such data will enable the agencies to better identify the relative 
importance of reducing fuels on the highest-hazard lands versus 
maintaining conditions on low-hazard lands. As we have noted, a 
separate performance measure for maintaining conditions on these low-
hazard lands is important so that their conditions do not deteriorate 
to more hazardous conditions while funding is being focused on lands 
with high-hazard conditions.[Footnote 17]

The agencies, however, face several challenges in implementing 
LANDFIRE. As we recently reported, the agencies lack a consistent 
approach to assessing the risks of wildland fires to ecosystem 
resources[Footnote 18] and an integrated, strategic, and unified 
approach to managing and using information systems and data, including 
those such as LANDFIRE, in wildland fire decision making. Currently, 
software, data standards, equipment, and training vary among the 
agencies and field units in ways that hamper needed sharing and 
consistent application of the data.[Footnote 19] Although the Wildland 
Fire Leadership Council has recently chartered a National Wildfire 
Enterprise Architecture Steering Group to implement an action plan for 
more effectively sharing and using these data, these system and 
implementation problems are not yet resolved.

Moreover, the agencies may have to re-examine the LANDFIRE data and 
models before implementing them. Recent research suggests that the 
effects of climate change on wildland fire might more adversely affect 
the nature, extent, and geographical distribution of hazards identified 
in LANDFIRE, as well as the costs for addressing them, than previously 
understood. In August 2004, a panel--appointed by the Wildland Fire 
Leadership Council to investigate escalating suppression costs--
reported that recent agency research suggested that climate change 
could have significant implications for the occurrence of wildland fire 
and the costs required to contain it.[Footnote 20] The research 
suggests that part of the recent increase in wildland fire has been 
caused by a shift in climate patterns, and that this new pattern may 
likely continue for decades, resulting in further increases in the 
amount of accumulated vegetation consumed nationally by wildland fire.

Fire Management Plans Will Need to Be Updated with Latest Data and 
Research on Wildland Fire: 

Incorporating LANDFIRE data and recent research on addressing wildland 
fire threats into local fire management plans will be central to 
completing a cohesive long-term fuels reduction strategy. The fire 
management plans are important for identifying the fuel reduction, 
preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation actions needed at the 
local level to more effectively address wildland fire threats. While 
these plans now are all scheduled for completion in December 2004, they 
will be based on outdated data once LANDFIRE is available. To improve 
the accuracy and usefulness of these plans, the agencies will need to 
update them when more detailed, nationally consistent LANDFIRE data 
become available within 5 years. The Forest Service indicated that this 
updating could occur during the agency's annual review of fire 
management plans to determine whether any changes to plans may be 
needed.

The agencies also will need to update their local fire management plans 
with recent agency research on the best approaches for more effectively 
addressing wildland fire threats. For example, a 2002 interagency 
analysis found that protecting wildland-urban interface communities 
more effectively--as well as more cost-effectively--might require 
locating a higher proportion of fuel reduction projects outside of the 
wildland-urban interface than currently envisioned, so that fires 
originating in the wildlands do not become too large to suppress by the 
time they arrive at the interface.[Footnote 21] Additionally, other 
agency research being field-tested in California and elsewhere suggests 
that placing fuel reduction treatments in specific geometric patterns 
can more effectively reduce the spread rate and intensity of wildland 
fires. As a result, agency officials believe the approach could provide 
more protection across the landscape than other approaches to locating 
and designing treatments, such as placing fuel breaks around 
communities and ecosystems resources. Moreover, these geometric fuel 
reduction patterns, because they are more efficient, reportedly may 
provide protection for up to three times as many community and 
ecosystem resources as other approaches do for the same cost.[Footnote 
22]

Identifying Long-Term Fuel Reduction Options and Needed Funding Is Key 
to Completing a Cohesive Strategy: 

As LANDFIRE is developed and fire management plans are updated, the 
agencies should become better positioned to formulate and communicate 
to the Congress a cohesive, long-term federal strategy that identifies 
various options and the related funding needed to reduce fuels and 
respond to our nation's wildland fire problems. The agencies have 
several efforts under way that should help them identify these options 
and funding needs.

In 2002, a team of Forest Service and Interior experts produced an 
estimate of the funds needed to implement eight different fuel 
reduction options for protecting communities and ecosystems across the 
nation over the next century. Their analysis also considered the 
impacts of fuels reduction activities on likely future costs for other 
principal wildland fire management activities, such as preparedness, 
suppression and rehabilitation, if fuels were not reduced.[Footnote 23] 
The team concluded that reducing the risks to communities and 
ecosystems across the nation could require an approximate tripling of 
current fuel reduction funding to about $1.4 billion for an initial 
period of a few years. These initially higher costs would decline after 
fuels had been reduced enough to use less expensive controlled burning 
methods in many areas and more fires could be suppressed at lower cost, 
with total wildland fire management costs, as well as risks, being 
reduced after 15 years. Alternatively, the team said that not making a 
substantial short-term investment using a landscape focus could 
increase costs, as well as risks to communities and ecosystems, in the 
long term. More recently, however, Interior has said that the costs and 
time required to reverse current increasing risks may be less when 
other vegetation management activities are considered that were not 
included in the interagency team's original assessment but also can 
influence wildland fire. The interagency experts said their estimates 
of long-term costs could only be considered an approximation because 
the data used for their national-level analysis were not sufficiently 
detailed. They said a more accurate estimate of the long-term federal 
costs and consequences of different options nationwide would require 
applying this national analysis framework in smaller geographic areas 
using more detailed data, such as that produced by LANDFIRE, and then 
aggregating these smaller-scale results.

Agency officials told us that another management system under 
development--Fire Program Analysis (FPA)--also could be used to help 
identify long-term fuel reduction options and related funding needs. 
FPA, which is being developed in response to a congressional committee 
direction to improve budget allocation tools,[Footnote 24] is designed 
to identify the most cost-effective allocations of annual preparedness 
funding for implementing agency field units' local fire management 
plans. Eventually, FPA will use LANDFIRE data and provide a smaller 
geographical scale for analyses of fuel reduction options. Thus, like 
LANDFIRE, FPA will be critical for updating fire management plans. 
Officials said that the FPA preparedness budget allocation systemæwhen 
integrated with an additional component that is now being considered 
for allocating annual fuel reduction funding--could be instrumental in 
identifying the most cost-effective long-term levels, mixes, and 
scheduling of these two wildland fire management activities. The 
agencies began training employees in October 2004 for initial 
implementation of the preparedness budget component in February 2005. 
However, completely developing FPA, including the fuel reduction 
funding component, is expected to cost about $40 million and take until 
at least 2007 and perhaps as long as 2009.

Finally, in May 2004, Agriculture and Interior began the initial phase 
of a wildland fire strategic planning effort that also might contribute 
to identifying long-term options and needed funding for reducing fuels 
and responding to the nation's wildland fire problems. This effortæthe 
Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Reviewæis intended to result in an overall 
federal interagency strategic planning document for wildland fire 
management and risk reduction and to provide a blueprint for developing 
affordable and integrated fire preparedness, fuels reduction, and fire 
suppression programs. Because of this effort's consideration of 
affordability, it may provide a useful framework for developing a 
cohesive strategy that includes identifying long-term options and 
related funding needs. The preliminary planning and analysis phases of 
this effort are scheduled to be completed in December 2004, followed by 
an initial report expected in March 2005.

Conclusions: 

In our initial reporting on the wildland fire problem 5 years ago, we 
concluded that it would take many years for the federal government to 
successfully address all of the complex management challenges that 
wildland fire presents. Accordingly, as expected, much important work 
remains to be done. Nevertheless, federal agencies over the last 5 
years have laid a sound foundation for success, including initial data 
development and planning and establishing a constructive, collaborative 
dialogue with the states and others. This foundation will be important 
for meeting the key challenges the agencies face in completing a 
cohesive strategy for addressing the nation's wildland fire problems.

If the agencies' progress to date toward developing a cohesive strategy 
is to be of enduring value, the agencies will need to complete ongoing 
efforts such as LANDFIRE, research, and local fire management plans. 
The agencies need the results of these ongoing efforts so that they can 
develop a sufficiently detailed blueprint of the various available and 
realistic long-term options and related funding needed for addressing 
our nation's wildland fire problems. Without such a blueprint, wildland 
fire will likely pose increasing risks to not only the nation's 
communities and ecosystems, but also to tens of billions of dollars of 
federal budgetary resources that will be spent to respond to wildland 
fire over the coming decades. If these budgetary resources are not 
cost-effectively applied, then the risks to communities and ecosystems 
will not be reduced as much as intended or in ways that are needed and 
desired. Critical to determining cost-effectiveness will be 
understanding the optimal timing of appropriation investments over the 
long term. Thus, a focus on long-term options and their costs provides 
necessary realism about available choices for protecting communities 
and ecosystems and required cohesiveness among the actions needed to 
implement them. Conversely, without such a long-term focus, agencies 
cannot ensure that the numerous collaborative efforts they undertake 
locally each year will add up to a cost-effective, affordable, long-
term national solution.

To date there have been no clear actions or a commitment by the 
agencies to explicitly identify and communicate to the Congress long-
term options and the funding needed to pursue them. In order for the 
Congress to make informed decisions about effective and affordable 
long-term approaches for addressing our nation's wildland fire 
problems, it should have, as soon as possible, a broad range of long-
term options and related funding needed to reduce and maintain wildland 
fuels at acceptable levels and respond to wildland fire threats.

Recommendation for Executive Action: 

We recommend that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior 
provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of the agencies' 
fiscal year 2006 wildland fire management budgets, with a joint 
tactical plan outlining the critical steps the agencies will take, 
together with related time frames, to complete a cohesive strategy that 
identifies long-term options and needed funding for reducing and 
maintaining fuels at acceptable levels and responding to the nation's 
wildland fire problems.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

We received written comments on a draft of this report from the Forest 
Service on behalf of Agriculture and from Interior. Both departments 
generally concurred with our findings and recommendation, but expressed 
concern about the time frame within which we recommended they provide 
the Congress with a joint tactical plan for completing a cohesive 
strategy to respond to wildland fire problems. We did not change our 
recommendation because we believe that the departments misunderstood 
this time frame and what we recommended that they provide within this 
period. The departments also provided technical comments that we have 
incorporated into the report, as appropriate. The Forest Service's and 
Interior's letters are included in appendixes III and IV, respectively, 
together with our evaluation of them.

As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents 
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days 
after the date of this letter. At that time, we will send copies of 
this report to other interested congressional committees. We also will 
send copies to the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior and the 
Chief of the Forest Service. We will make copies available to others 
upon request. In addition, this report will be available at no charge 
on the GAO Web site at [Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov].

If you or your staff have questions about this report, please contact 
me at (202) 512-3841 or at nazzaror@gao.gov or David Bixler at (202) 
512-7201 or bixlerd@gao.gov. Key contributors to this report are listed 
in appendix V.

Sincerely yours,

Signed by: 

Robin M. Nazzaro: 
Director, Natural Resources and Environment: 

[End of section]

Appendixes: 

Appendix I: GAO Products Related to Federal Wildland Fire Management: 

Wildland Fires: Forest Service and BLM Need Better Information and a 
Systematic Approach for Assessing the Risks of Environmental Effects. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-705]
Washington, D.C.: June 24, 2004.

Federal Land Management: Additional Guidance on Community Involvement 
Could Enhance Effectiveness of Stewardship Contracting. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-652]
Washington, D.C.: June 14, 2004.

Wildfire Suppression: Funding Transfers Cause Project Cancellations and 
Delays, Strained Relationships, and Management Disruptions. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-612]
Washington, D.C.: June 2, 2004.

Biscuit Fire: Analysis of Fire Response, Resource Availability, and 
Personnel Certification Standards. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-426]
Washington, D.C.: April 12, 2004.

Forest Service: Information on Appeals and Litigation Involving Fuel 
Reduction Activities. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-52]
Washington, D.C.: October 24, 2003.

Geospatial Information: Technologies Hold Promise for Wildland Fire 
Management, but Challenges Remain. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-1047]
Washington, D.C.: September 23, 2003.

Wildland Fire Management: Additional Actions Required to Better 
Identify and Prioritize Lands Needing Fuels Reduction. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-805]
Washington, D.C.: August 15, 2003.

Wildland Fires: Forest Service's Removal of Timber Burned by Wildland 
Fires. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-808R]
Washington, D.C.: July 10, 2003.

Wildland Fires: Better Information Needed on Effectiveness of Emergency 
Stabilization and Rehabilitation Treatments. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-430]
Washington, D.C.: April 4, 2003.

Results-Oriented Management: Agency Crosscutting Actions and Plans in 
Border Control, Flood Mitigation and Insurance, Wetlands, and Wildland 
Fire Management. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-321]
Washington, D.C.: December 20, 2002.

Wildland Fire Management: Reducing the Threat of Wildland Fires 
Requires Sustained and Coordinated Effort. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-843T]
Washington, D.C: June 13, 2002.

Wildland Fire Management: Improved Planning Will Help Agencies Better 
Identify Fire-Fighting Preparedness Needs. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-158]
Washington, D.C.: March 29, 2002.

Severe Wildland Fires: Leadership and Accountability Needed to Reduce 
Risks to Communities and Resources. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-259]
Washington, D.C.: January 31, 2002.

The National Fire Plan: Federal Agencies Are Not Organized to 
Effectively and Efficiently Implement the Plan. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-01-1022T]
Washington, D.C.: July 31, 2001.

Forest Service Roadless Areas: Potential Impact of Proposed Regulations 
on Ecological Sustainability. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-01-47]
Washington, D.C.: November 8, 2000.

Reducing Wildfire Threats: Funds Should be Targeted to the Highest Risk 
Areas. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/T-RCED-00-296]
Washington, D.C.: September 13, 2000.

Fire Management: Lessons Learned from the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) 
Fire and Actions Needed to Reduce Fire Risks. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/T-RCED-00-273]
Washington, D.C.: August 14, 2000.

Fire Management: Lessons Learned from the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) 
Fire. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/T-RCED-00-257]
Washington, D.C.: August 14, 2000.

Forest Service: Actions Needed for the Agency to Become More 
Accountable for Its Performance. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/T-RCED-00-236]
Washington, D.C.: June 29, 2000.

Park Service: Agency Is Not Meeting Its Structural Fire Safety 
Responsibilities. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/RCED-00-154]
Washington, D.C.: May 22, 2000.

Forest Service: A Framework for Improving Accountability. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/RCED/AIMD-00-2]
Washington, D.C.: October 13, 1999.

Federal Wildfire Activities: Issues Needing Future Attention. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/T-RCED-99-282]
Washington, D.C.: September 14, 1999.

Federal Wildfire Activities: Current Strategy and Issues Needing 
Attention. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/RCED-99-233]
Washington, D.C.: August 13, 1999.

Western National Forests: Status of Forest Service's Efforts to Reduce 
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/T-RCED-99-241]
Washington, D.C.: June 29, 1999.

Forest Service Priorities: Evolving Mission Favors Resource Protection 
over Production. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/RCED-99-166]
Washington, D.C.: June 17, 1999.

Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy Is Needed to Address 
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats. 
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/RCED-99-65]
Washington, D.C.: April 2, 1999. 

[End of section]

Appendix II: Scope and Methodology: 

To identify the progress that federal land management agencies have 
made in addressing the threat posed by wildland fires over the past 5 
years and the challenges that remain over the next 5 years, we reviewed 
past GAO, Congressional Research Service, and National Academy of 
Public Administration reports on wildland fires. We interviewed 
officials from the Forest Service and Department of the Interior 
agencies that are responsible for wildland fire management and obtained 
data on acres burned from the National Interagency Fire Center in 
Boise, Idaho. We also interviewed and obtained data from Forest Service 
and Interior officials responsible for developing long-term fuel 
treatment options and costs, LANDFIRE, the Fire Program Analysis 
system, climate change estimates, fire management plans, performance 
measures, and the Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Review. In addition, we 
interviewed officials and obtained data from the National Academy of 
Public Administration and the Brookings Institution. We conducted our 
work between May 2004 and November 2004 in accordance with generally 
accepted government auditing standards.

[End of section]

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Agriculture: 

United States Department of Agriculture: 
Forest Service: 
Washington Office: 

14tH & Independence SW: 
P.O. Box 96090: 
Washington, DC 20090-6090:

File Code: 1310/1930:

Date: December 10, 2004:

Mr. Barry T. Hill:
Director, Natural Resources and Environment: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, N.W.: 
Washington, DC 20548:

Dear Mr. Hill:

Thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on the draft 
Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report, GAO-05-147, "Wildland 
Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges 
Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy." Overall, the report 
correctly recognizes that important progress has been made in 
addressing wildland fire management issues. However, it should be noted 
that the progress has occurred during the last four years, not five as 
the report indicates. While the cohesive strategy was completed in 
1999, significant progress was only possible with the passage of the 
2001 appropriations.

Notably, GAO acknowledges that priorities have been clarified and 
funding increased for identified needs; coordination and collaboration 
strengthened; and better performance measures and results monitoring 
framework have been developed. The report also identifies three 
components that GAO considers key to long term success for wildland 
fire management: completing and implementing LANDFIRE; updating Fire 
Management Plans with latest data and research; and identifying long 
term fuel reduction options and needed funding as part of a cohesive 
strategy.

The report makes several specific points that the Forest Service would 
like to see clarified.

Under the heading "Increases in Wildland Fire Exposed Weaknesses in the 
Federal Response," the GAO comments that the Forest Service and 
Interior had issued no specific national level guidance on the 
prioritization of treatments, based upon a 2003 GAO report. However, 
the Chief of the Forest Service and the DOI Assistant Secretary for 
Policy Management and Budget issued national direction in January 2003, 
to establish a collaborative process for prioritization and selection 
of fuel treatment projects for 2004.

The section "Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research, Fire 
Management Planning and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been 
Strengthened' includes a statement that requires clarification of 
several points. The report states that LANDFIRE "will help identify 
numerous community and ecosystem resources at risk from wildland fire 
such as residential and commercial structures, species habitat, air and 
water quality, and soils and enhanced models of likely fire behavior to 
better identify the nature of these risks." However, because LANDFIRE 
will produce data at a 30-meter resolution, the data is better suited 
to inform strategic decisions about fire, fuels and other land 
management activities.

Under the section "Fire Management Plans Will Need to Be Undated with 
Latest Data and Research on Wildland Fire," the report states that 
"agencies have yet to establish a schedule or procedures for updating 
fire management plans to incorporate the LANDFIRE data and models." 
However, all Fire Management Plans are reviewed on a yearly basis to 
determine whether any changes may be needed. Therefore, it will be 
unnecessary to develop a separate schedule or procedure to update the 
Fire Management Plans with LANDFIRE data and models.

Finally, the report recommends that the Secretaries provide Congress a 
joint tactical plan that identifies long term options and needed 
funding for reducing and maintaining fuels at acceptable levels in time 
for the FY 2006 budget considerations. While the Forest Service concurs 
with the premise of the recommendation, there is simply insufficient 
time to develop a tactical plan as described in the report. Two of the 
essential elements for such a plan, LANDFIRE and Fire Program Analysis 
(FPA), are still under development. Ground verification and 
collaborative interagency involvement at the field level to ensure 
accuracy and usefulness, are just beginning. A better alternative is to 
let the LANDFIRE and FPA processes become more fully operational. 
Assuming there are no major problems encountered with implementation of 
the two elements, producing a plan such as GAO suggests may be possible 
in time for the 2007 budget.

Again, we thank GAO for the fair and balanced review of the progress 
made to date in Federal wildland fire management. If you have any 
questions, please contact Sandy Coleman, Agency Audit Liaison, at (703) 
605-4940:

Sincerely,

Signed by: 

DALE N. BOSWORTH Chief:

cc: Jesse L. King, Sandra Cantler, Sandy T. Coleman and Christine Roye: 

The following are GAO's comments on the USDA Forest Service's letter 
dated December 10, 2005.

GAO Comments: 

1. We did not change our characterization of the period over which 
progress was made because efforts made earlier than 4 years ago 
provided an important basis for subsequent progress, including (1) the 
September 8, 2000, report to the President from the Secretaries of 
Agriculture and the Interior that was used to inform the 2001 
appropriation request and (2) the Forest Service's formulation of its 
own fuel reduction strategy that was initiated in 1999.

2. We clarified the language of our report to make clearer our meaning 
that, although national guidance was issued, this guidance--as we have 
previously reported--was not specific enough for prioritizing fuels 
reduction projects.

3. We clarified the language in our report to make clearer our meaning 
that, by identifying landscape fuel hazards, LANDFIRE will help 
identify the risks to those resources.

4. We have included this observation in our report. However, we note 
that the agencies will need to ensure this is done because of (1) the 
likely impacts that the LANDFIRE and FPA systems will have on the fire 
management plans, (2) the importance of the plans for identifying 
aggregate national fuel reduction options and costs, and (3) agencies' 
past failures to keep these plans up-to-date, as our report notes.

5. We did not recommend that the long-term options and associated costs 
be identified in the joint tactical plan. Rather, we said that this 
joint tactical plan should specify the steps and related time frames 
that the agencies will take in completing a cohesive strategy 
containing options and costs. In addition, we did not recommend that 
the joint tactical plan be provided concurrently with the agencies' 
fiscal year 2006 budget submissions, but only that it be provided in 
time for the Congress's deliberation of the agencies' appropriations 
for fiscal year 2006. Should the agencies subsequently identify 
adjustments that need to be made to the tactical plan because of 
evolving LANDFIRE and FPA processes, they can so inform the Congress of 
those adjustments and the reasons for them. Because this is a long-term 
effort in which each year's progress can have significant long-term 
fiscal, resource, and human safety consequences, we believe it is 
important from this point forward that the agencies more transparently 
identify for the Congress the specific steps they will undertake, and 
their associated time frames, for identifying long-term options and 
costs. Accordingly, we made no change to our recommendation.

[End of section]

Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of the Interior: 

United States Department of the Interior:

OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY: 
POLICY, MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET:  

Washington, DC 20240:

DEC 10 2004:

Barry T. Hill, Director:

Natural Resources and Environment:

United States Government Accountability Office 441 G Street, N.W.

Washington, DC 20548:

Dear Mr. Hill:

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to review the draft report, 
Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but 
Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy (GAO-05-147). This 
report provides much needed and appreciated broad overview of the 
strides taken to improve community protection from catastrophic 
wildfire under the National Fire Plan, as well as reinforcing our view 
of how to improve wildland fire management in the coming 5 years. GAO 
is to be commended for cutting through a multitude of issues and facts 
to see and describe the big picture accurately.

Overall the report is straightforward and conforms to a large extent 
with our view of where progress has been made and some specific actions 
that need to be taken. This Department and our major Federal partner, 
the U.S. Forest Service, have indeed clarified our program priorities 
and increased the funding for them. Fire management collaboration, 
cooperation, and planning are better than ever and continuing to 
improve. Program accountability has improved as well, as better 
performance measures have been established and results documented.

The sole recommendation for executive action, that the Secretaries 
provide Congress with a joint tactical plan outlining the critical 
steps, long-term options, and necessary funding "for reducing and 
maintaining fuels at acceptable levels and responding to the Nation's 
wildfire problems" in time for consideration in the 2006 budget does 
present some serious challenges. There is not sufficient time to 
prepare a joint detailed plan in time to be included in the 2006 budget 
request, and it would be premature to develop a detailed plan. Two of 
the essential elements for defining and weighing the most critical 
problems and determining long-term options to deal with them most 
effectively, LANDFIRE and Fire Program Analysis (FPA), are under 
development. The report correctly recognizes the central importance of 
LANDFIRE and FPA to the future of wildland fire management planning.

Ground verification and collaborative interagency involvement at the 
field level to ensure the accuracy and usefulness of LANDFIRE and FPA 
are just beginning. A better alternative the processes become more 
fully operational. If the transitions for these key integrative 
programs are successful, producing a plan such as GAO suggests may be 
possible in the 2007 budget, the first that FPA will influence 
significantly across the Nation, not just within prototype areas.

In addition to those recommendations, the report includes several 
specific comments to which we would like to add further clarifications.

A Under the heading "Increases in Wildland Fire Exposed Weaknesses in 
the Federal Response," the report states that as of 2003 the Forest 
Service and the Department of the Interior had not issued specific 
national level guidance on the prioritization of treatments. In fact, 
in January 2003, the Chief of the Forest Service and the DOI Assistant 
Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget issued national direction 
establishing a collaborative process to prioritize and select fuel 
treatment projects for 2004.

In the next section, "Progress in National Strategy: Priorities Have 
Been Clarified and Funding Has Been Increased for Identified Needs," 
the report points out that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 
(HFRA) directed that at least 50 percent of the project funding be used 
in the wildland urban interface. In this regard HFRA reinforces a goal 
that DOI has significantly exceeded every year since 2001. Under both 
the National Fire Plan and the HFRA, this Department has directed 60-65 
percent of our fuels reduction project funding to the wildland urban 
interface.

In the section, "Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research 
Fire Management Planning and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been 
Strengthened," there is a statement that is not entirely accurate. The 
report states that LANDFIRE will locate "...numerous community and 
ecosystem resources, such as residential and commercial structures..." 
Since LANDFIRE has 30-meter resolution, only very large buildings could 
be identified as structures. It is more likely that LANDFIRE would 
distinguish between urban and suburban areas, such as housing 
developments, and surrounding forests or other areas covered by 
vegetation. The main value of LANDFIRE will be the ability to 
characterize the vegetation in many ways useful to land managers.

Under the heading, "Completing and Implementing the LANDFIRE System Is 
Essential to Identifying and Addressing Wildland Fire Threats," there 
is a discussion of the large-fire cost panel and their finding that 
climate change could have significant implications on wildland fire and 
suppression costs in the future. To this discussion we would like to 
add the point that forest thinning has the effect of increasing forest 
resilience to drought stress and tolerance to climatic variability. 
This should reduce the potential for outbreaks of insects and disease 
and extreme wildfires.

In the section, "Identifying Long-Term Fuel Reduction Options and 
Needed Funding s Key to Completing a Cohesive Strategy," there is a 
discussion of a 2002 interagency group's cost estimate for needed fuel 
reduction. It is important to note that this team did not include any 
non-National Fire Plan management of vegetation. After HFRA was passed, 
the Departments found that over 1 million acres benefited from 
treatments performed outside the National Fire Plan fuels reduction 
program. These additional acres would have substantially changed the 
outcome reported in 2002 because the total cost and time before 
condition trends reversed would both have been reduced. The accuracy of 
the analysis was also significantly limited by the spatial resolution 
of satellite-derived vegetation conditions. Completion of LANDFIRE 
will permit this type of analysis to be performed with significantly 
greater accuracy, leading to much greater confidence in the outcomes.

In conclusion, we would like to say that the Department of the Interior 
is gratified that GAO has strides made since the beginning of the 
National Fire Plan and the President's Healthy Forests Initiative. We 
would have been proud if the improvements in fuels reduction, fire 
response capability, and cooperative partnerships had taken 5 full 
years to accomplish as noted in the report. However, it is only fair to 
point out that all that progress has taken only 4 years. We are now 
entering the fifth year of the National Fire Plan.

Once again, we thank the GAO for a balanced and insightful overview of 
Federal wildland fire management.

Sincerely,

Signed by: 

P. Lynn Scarlett: 
Assistant Secretary: 
Policy, Management and Budget:  

The following are GAO's comments on the Department of the Interior's 
letter dated December 10, 2005.

GAO Comments: 

1. We did not recommend that the long-term options and associated costs 
be identified in the joint tactical plan. Rather, we said that this 
joint tactical plan should specify the steps and related time frames 
that the agencies will take in completing a cohesive strategy 
containing options and costs. In addition, we did not recommend that 
the joint tactical plan be provided concurrently with the agencies' 
fiscal year 2006 budget submissions, but only that it be provided in 
time for the Congress's deliberation of the agencies' appropriations 
for fiscal year 2006. Should the agencies subsequently identify 
adjustments that need to be made to the tactical plan because of 
evolving LANDFIRE and FPA processes, they can so inform the Congress of 
those adjustments and the reasons for them. Because this is a long-term 
effort in which each year's progress can have significant long-term 
fiscal, resource, and human safety consequences, we believe it is 
important from this point forward that the agencies more transparently 
identify for the Congress the specific steps they will undertake, and 
their associated time frames, for identifying long-term options and 
costs. Accordingly, we made no change to our recommendation.

2. We clarified the language of our report to make clearer our meaning 
that, although national guidance was issued, as we have previously 
reported, this guidance was not specific enough for prioritizing fuels 
reduction projects.

3. In reporting on the progress that has been made in clarifying 
priorities, we are merely noting that the act provided a good starting 
point for undertaking analysis to identify and prioritize funding 
needs. We neither are criticizing the emphasis that the agencies 
previously placed on protecting wildland urban interface areas nor are 
making an assessment of the act's priorities, since our report notes 
that further analysis is needed to determine the most cost-effective 
allocation among priorities.

4. We clarified the language in our report to make clearer our meaning 
that, by identifying landscape fuel hazards, LANDFIRE will help 
identify the risks to those resources.

5. We agree these factors should be among those raised by climate 
change research that our report says should be considered in 
identifying long-term options and associated costs.

6. We have modified our draft to include the observation that Interior 
believes inclusion of this additional acreage would have substantially 
changed the outcome the team reported. Our report already noted the 
interagency team's view that the accuracy of the assessment's outcomes 
will be improved by use of more detailed data such as from LANDFIRE. 
However, we are encouraged by the departments' commitment, expressed in 
both of their comments on our draft report, to use this type of 
analysis to identify and communicate to the Congress long-term fuel 
reduction options and costs, reversing a June 2002 decision by the 
Wildland Fire Leadership Council not to do so. We believe that the 
fulfillment of this commitment is needed to provide the Congress with a 
sufficiently informed understanding of the long-term consequences of 
different appropriation choices that it will need to make over the 
coming years and decades to adequately and cost-effectively address 
wildland fire management issues.

7. We did not change our characterization of the period over which 
progress was made because efforts made earlier than 4 years ago 
provided an important basis for subsequent progress, including (1) the 
September 8, 2000, report to the President from the Secretaries of 
Agriculture and the Interior that was used to inform the 2001 
appropriation request and (2) the Forest Service's formulation of its 
own fuel reduction strategy that was initiated in 1999.

[End of section]

Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contacts: 

Robin M. Nazzaro, (202) 512-3841: 
David P. Bixler, (202) 512-7201: 

Staff Acknowledgments: 

In addition to those named above, Jonathan Altshul, Barry T. Hill, 
Richard Johnson, Chester Joy, and Jonathan McMurray made key 
contributions to this report.

(360466): 

FOOTNOTES

[1] The Interior land management agencies are the Bureau of Land 
Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. Also, 
Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs participates in federal wildland 
fire management activities.

[2] GAO, Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy Is Needed to 
Address Catastrophic Wildfire Threats, GAO/RCED-99-65 (Washington, 
D.C.: Apr. 2, 1999).

[3] GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Additional Actions Required to 
Better Identify and Prioritize Lands Needing Fuels Reduction, GAO-03-
805 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 15, 2003).

[4] GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Improved Planning Will Help Agencies 
Better Identify Fire-Fighting Preparedness Needs, GAO-02-158 
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 29, 2002).

[5] GAO, National Fire Plan: Federal Agencies Are Not Organized to 
Effectively and Efficiently Implement the Plan, GAO-01-1022T 
(Washington, D.C.: July 31, 2001).

[6] GAO/RCED-99-65; GAO-03-805; and GAO, Wildland Fires: Better 
Information Needed on Effectiveness of Emergency Stabilization and 
Rehabilitation Treatments, GAO-03-430 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 4, 2003).

[7] The various documents that make up the National Fire Plan include 
(1) a September 2000 report from the Secretaries of Agriculture and the 
Interior to the President in response to the wildland fires of 2000, 
(2) congressional direction accompanying substantial new 
appropriations in fiscal year 2001, and (3) several approved and draft 
strategies to implement all or parts of the plan. For a description of 
these strategy documents, including the National Fire Plan, and their 
contents, goals, and relationships to one another, see GAO, Severe 
Wildland Fires: Leadership and Accountability Needed to Reduce Risks to 
Communities and Resources, GAO-02-259 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 31, 
2002).

[8] Pub. L. No. 108-148, 117 Stat. 1887 (2003).

[9] GAO-02-259 and GAO-03-805. 

[10] GAO/RCED-99-65.

[11] GAO/RCED-99-65.

[12] GAO-02-158.

[13] GAO-02-259; and Managing Wildland Fire: Enhancing Capacity to 
Implement the Federal Interagency Policy, a report by the National 
Academy of Public Administration for the Department of the Interior, 
December 2001.

[14] Departments of Agriculture and the Interior and the Western 
Governors Association, A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland 
Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment: A 10-Year Comprehensive 
Strategy (Washington, D.C., August 2001).

[15] GAO/RCED-99-65.

[16] GAO, Wildland Fires: Forest Service and BLM Need Better 
Information and a Systematic Approach for Assessing the Risks of 
Environmental Effects, GAO-04-705 (Washington, D.C.: June 24, 2004). 

[17] GAO-03-805.

[18] GAO-04-705.

[19] GAO, Geospatial Information: Technologies Hold Promise for 
Wildland Fire Management, but Challenges Remain, GAO-03-1047 
(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 23, 2003).

[20] "Large Fire Suppression Costs: Strategies for Cost Management," a 
report of the Strategic Issues Panel on Large Fire Suppression Costs, 
Wildland Fire Leadership Council, August 26, 2004.

[21] Hann, Wendell et al., A Cohesive Strategy for Protecting People 
and Sustaining Natural Resources: Predicting Outcomes for Program 
Options (a paper presented at the Fire, Fuel Treatments, and Ecological 
Restoration Conference, a meeting of national wildland fire experts 
convened by the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort 
Collins, Colorado, April 2002). 

[22] Mark A. Finney, "Design of Regular Landscape Fuel Treatment 
Patterns for Modifying Fire Growth and Behavior," Forest Science, vol. 
47, no. 2 (May 2001).

[23] Hann et al., A Cohesive Strategy.

[24] GAO-02-158.

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