Following the Money: National Fire Plan Funding and Implementation

The National Fire Plan (NFP), a package of policy documents that provides the framework for managing fire on public lands, was launched in the wake of the dramatic and expensive fires of 2000 in order to reduce the many risks associated with wildfire. In the last five years, Congress has allocated billions of dollars to the implementation of the Plan, which seeks to “actively respond to severe wildland fires and their impacts to communities while ensuring sufficient firefighting capacity for the future.”

The NFP stands apart from previous efforts to manage fire on public land in two ways: the dramatic increase in funding designated to fire management; and the focus on fire prevention and fuels treatment in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), the place where private property abuts public land.

Despite the NFP’s policy strength and depth, however, the plan’s implementation is still lacking. This is in large part because of management obstacles: institutional rigidity in the federal agencies and accounting and reporting weaknesses hamper the delivery of limited funding to the places where it would do the most good. By “following the money” within the United States Forest Service, the agency primarily charged with implementing the NFP, this report examines the various factors that contribute to decision-making within the fire program on public land.

Following the money downwards -- tracking Congressional appropriations as they travel through the Forest Service’s headquarters in Washington, DC through regional and state authorities and finally to individual forests -- tells us much about the effectiveness of the Forest Service in meeting NFP objectives:

National funding trends reveal strong federal preference for fire suppression and hazardous fuels reduction, along with preparedness funding, while complementary important programs like State and Local Assistance remain under-funded, severely limiting the extent to which many communities are able to prepare for fire.
The bottomless supply of money for fire suppression creates a “blank check mentality,” and fire managers have little incentive to reduce skyrocketing suppression costs. As a result, the agency regularly runs out of money allocated for suppression and has to divert funds from other important forest management programs, money that is rarely repaid in full.
Despite consistent policy direction urging fire planners to utilize a collaborative process, there is no funding for the development of this approach. In the Forest Service, unfortunately, poor funding often means slow implementation.

Following performance measures upwards -- tracing the reporting of accomplishments from the field level back up to the Washington office -- reveals additional issues blocking effective NFP implementation:

Fire program performance measures, as currently structured, often create unintended incentives that encourage managers to demonstrate “success” by accomplishing easily measurable outputs that may not in fact contribute to the larger goals of reducing wildfire risk or improving forest health.
There are no performance measures that meaningfully encourage fire managers to devote limited resources to collaborative, long-term community involvement in fire planning.
Forest Service fire program management is hampered by weak accounting of funds and sloppy reporting of accomplishments.