Cost To Fight Wildfire Will Skyrocket This Year, Thanks to Climate Change

http://www.wunderground.com/news/cost-fight-wildfires-will-be-hundreds-millions-dollars-more-govt-estimated-usda-20140501

By: By Terrell Johnson
Published: May 2, 2014

The federal government will be forced to cough up "hundreds of millions of dollars" more to fight wildfires in 2014 than it has budgeted so far, thanks to a wildfire season that is bringing bigger and more intense fires that begin much earlier in the year than they used to.

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To make up the difference, the agencies will have to rob Peter to pay Paul, so to speak – they'll have to reduce staff in other areas and take money that had been budgeted for projects like forest restoration, and instead spend it on firefighting.

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"[It] takes funding away from forest management activities such as mechanical thinning and controlled burns that reduce both the incidence and severity of wildfires. In addition to fire borrowing, over the last two decades, the Forest Service has also had to shift more and more money to firefighting, thereby reducing foresters and other staff by over 30 percent and more than doubling the number of firefighters."

Climate change – the effects we see and feel from the greenhouse-gas-fueled heating of Earth's climate over time – deserves a big part of the blame for the longer, more intense wildfire seasons we're experiencing today, said Rhea Suh, Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget at the Interior Dept.

"With climate change contributing to longer and more intense wildfire seasons, the dangers and costs of fighting those fires increase substantially," she said in a news release, noting that over the past 30 years, the length of fire seasons nationwide has expanded by 60 to 80 days.

The size of the area that burns due to wildfires each year has more than doubled during the same period, to about 7 million acres annually today.

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