Coalition Calls for Comprehensive Fire Funding Solution

SAF joined the Partner Caucus on Fire Suppression Funding Solutions, a coalition of more than 128 diverse organizations, in calling on congressional leadership to support a comprehensive fire funding solution. 

In a letter signed on November 21, the coalition stated that addressing fire funding impacts on land management agencies is critical to ensuring land management goals are met. The letter urges Congress to ensure that the solution is comprehensive in solving the borrowing issue and the erosion of budgets due to increasing wildfire suppression costs. 

Many proposals under consideration would ban the practice of transferring additional funds when appropriated funding is spent, but that’s only a partial fix in addressing the impacts from rising wildland firefighting costs. These proposals do not address the larger problem of shifting funding from non-fire programs to fire programs, which results from the way firefighting funds are calculated, budgeted, and allocated. As that ten-year average is used to calculate suppression increases, and as budgets remain relatively flat, less is available for forest management and restoration, research, recreation, and other critical private and public land objectives.