Debt shortchanges forest work

Our national debt is spreading out of control like a raging wildfire. Among other things, that added liability impacts our ability to fight those fires and reforest those scorched woods and range lands.

Replanting trees is necessary to prevent erosion, provide clean drinking water, reduce CO2, protect fish and wildlife habitat, and rehabilitate public open spaces. It is very costly and under current funding schemes, the money is not available.

Our national debt just surpassed $35 trillion for the first time in history. Those we elect brush aside balancing taxes and spending, yet America continues to accumulate debt at a record pace. Now, each U.S. taxpayer would have to pony up nearly $268,000 if our creditors called for immediate repayment.

Over the next 10 years, without any changes in current policies, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that net interest will total $5.4 trillion and become the fastest growing component of the federal budget.

According to Smithsonian Magazine in 2022 “wildfires and other issues have devastated U.S. woodlands in recent years, and Forest Service arborists can’t keep up with replanting lost trees. They’ve reforested just six percent of land damaged by fires, pests and extreme weather events, which has created a backlog of about 4.1 million acres.” That is 6,400 sq. miles of barren ground—a land mass the size of Hawaii.

Federal agencies spent an all-time high of $2.9 billion combating wildfires last year, which is more than 12 times what was spent on suppression efforts in 1985. This year at the end of July, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise reports, there are 94 large active wildfires nationwide, and have burned 2.1 million acres.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) chairs a congressional committee which reported last year that the total impact of wildfires is as high as $893 billion each year---up to 4% of GDP.

Forest fires are part of nature; however, they are getting more dangerous and expensive to fight. As fires increase in size and intensity, suppression, environmental restoration and mitigation costs soar.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), co-author of Fix our Forests legislation, calculates there is urgent need for active management across 117 million acres of overgrown, fire-prone forests. The bill simplifies and expedites environmental reviews to reduce costs and planning times for critical forest management projects while maintaining rigorous environmental standards.

The bill also aims to end frivolous litigation that delays necessary forest management efforts, often for years. Congress needs to tell federal bureaucrats it is time to get things done on the ground, not continue to equivocate and litigate in court.

Cutting diseased, dead and fire damaged trees is not new. In intermountain forests (northeastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia), loggers once salvaged beetle-killed trees and sent them to rural sawmills to be cut into 2x4s. That practice was severely curtailed 30 years ago as logging has been constrained.

Knowing that mature trees are most susceptible to insects and disease, public forest managers once designed timber sales on small tracts as fire breaks. The logging and subsequent clean-up removed forest fuels which, in recent years, have been allowed to accumulate.

Harvesting helped fund replanting and fire access road construction. Environmental mitigation techniques have dramatically improved resulting in clean water and unencumbered access for fish returning to natural spawning grounds.

As we look forward to more austere times, we must revise management practices in state and federal forests. We can no longer allow nature to just take its course. There needs to be a more balanced approach which reduces the risk of wildfire.

Megafires are polluting our air, endangering our health and safety, and burning a bigger hole in our pocketbooks. By thinning, salvaging and logging, we could not only save expenses, but create jobs and bring in needed revenue without borrowing.

— Don C. Brunell is a business analyst, writer and columnist. He retired as president of the Association of Washington Business, the state’s oldest and largest business organization, and now lives in Vancouver. He can be contacted at [email protected].