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Wildfire Governance
Wildfires are an essential component to the overall health of many forest ecosystems across the United States. Every year wildfires burn through millions of acres of forested land causing damaging property and human health. Due to these millions of dollars are spent each year on the suppressions of these fires. It is estimated that the true cost to fight these fires is 2 to 30 times greater than the reported suppression costs. Climate change as well as past management strategies have only continued to exacerbate the scale of these wildfire events. To manage the growing threat wildland fires pose in the United States new governance strategies are needed to respond.

Increased public awareness of the impacts posed have further propelled the ability of lawmakers to enact new policies. Many policies focus on response instead of looking at how to decrease the impacts. Several groups including researchers, governmental agencies, nonprofits and private companies are proposing changes to management strategies. There are several other issues present, including the lack of funding going into forest management in an attempt to mitigate the effects of wildfires. Wildfires also produce a large quantity of ash which has the potential to cause many air quality related issues. More research is still needed to understand the effects wildfires can have on human health.

Problems Of Wildfire Governance:
How wildfires have been viewed in the United States have changed over time. For a majority portion of the United States’ history wildland fire has been seen as a destructive force. This is because wildland fires have destroyed areas that were deemed key economic forest areas. The mindset that forest fires were simply dangers and needed suppression was furthered by the introduction of Smokey Bear in 1944. Smoky Bear and his saying “only you can prevent wildfires '' continued the policy of suppression. It became national policy to suppress all, natural and human caused, wildfires in the United States. This policy led to overstocking of many of the forested ecosystems nationally.

Additionally, wildfires have historically kept the quantity of dead standing wood in the forest to a manageable level. Since many forests missed their fire return interval fuel ladders have developed. Fuel ladders connect the understory and overstory with easily flammable material. These fuel ladders lead to more severe stand replacing fires. So, the inaction in forest management continues to perpetuate the problems posed by wildland fires.

Wildland fire use is the intentional introduction of fire into an ecosystem to achieve a specific management goal. Prescribed burning has been conducted for hundreds of years in North America. There are records of native peoples intently setting fires to manage parries and hunting areas. Prescribed burning has only relatively recently made a resurgence in the United States. Due to current forest conditions, it is not uncommon that mechanical measures are needed to first make an area safe enough to burn. These mechanical measures are often time consuming and expensive and are not conducted. When proper planning and preparation controlled burns can cause more harm to an ecosystem than good. In response to the increasing costs of wildland fires many landowner and federal agencies are installing firebreaks as containment and management methods.

Focusing events for Wildfire Governance:
Since 1983 the National Interagency Fire Center has tracked the number of fires as well as the number of acres that have burned each year. According to this data, of the 10 years with the largest acreage burned, nine have occurred since 2000, including the peak year in 2015. The increasing size of these fires have only served to change how the public views wildfires.

Wildland fire governance and in particular the way that wildland fires are fraught have also shifted in response to tragedy. The Yarnell Hill Fire in June of 2013 left 19 firefighters dead and set into motion a rewriting of wildland firefighter protocols. Prior to that in 1994 the south canyon fire in Colorado claimed the lives of 14 firefighters. These disasters helped to increase the safety measures implemented by wildland firefighters today. Additionally, many policy makers have sighted these incidents as needed for increased wildfire funding.

Another area that has caught the public’s attention is the proximity to major cities and infrastructure. With the shifting magnitude of fires structures in the wildland urban-interface are constantly under threat. California’s urban landscape in particular has experienced the growing threat of wildfires. During the summer of 2020 the skies of Los Angeles and San Francisco both turned red in responses to particulates generated by wildland fires. In response the State of California has tasked their division of forestry and Cal-Fire with suppressing wildfires. Many states provided wildland fire crews to help supplement national agencies wildland firefighting efforts.

Policies of Wildfire Governance:
Proposed policies to address issues associated with wildland fire management have increased since the problem has gained media attention in recent years. Interest groups, researchers, and the timber industry are main proponents of policy changes. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) aims to connect stakeholders in wildland fire operations and establish national standards for wildland fire operations. Researchers also contribute to the push for wildland fire policy, however much more research is necessary in order to create comprehensive and effective policies. Most studies are conducted by universities and the US EPA with a strong focus on effects to human health. The timber industry often pushes for an increase in logging in order to decrease wildfire fuel. These policy propositions are opposed by researchers that have provided evidence that policies should focus instead on prescribed, controlled burns.

These policies are proposed to the president and Congress. If they become laws, then the US Department of the Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire works with many other offices nationwide to interpret and develop the policy. A presidential cabinet subcommittee for establishing the wildland fire management policy was also created in January of 2021 to refine wildland fire policies and improve state and federal communication about such policies. These federal offices must work with state and local governments as well as interest groups, researchers, and loggers to create comprehensive and effective policies to manage wildland fire.

Politics of Wildfire Governance:
Over time the ability of policymakers to act on wildland fire management has varied greatly depending on how political power was distributed and on how public opinion had shifted. Wildland fire policy was spearheaded by the US Forest Service (USFS) until recently when cities and states began to become more involved. A major politician in forestry was Gifford Pinchot, the 1st head of the USFS who had a close friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt. This gave Gifford Pinchot a large amount of political capital and influence, which he used to put his conservationist ideals into policy. These ideals entailed protecting forested lands for long term, sustainable, and practical use. He placed greater importance on the utility of natural resources than their intrinsic value outside of anthropogenic use. This mindset is still at the forefront of the USFS’s activities, with their motto being “Caring for the Land and Serving People”. After Pinchot’s tenure as head of the USFS, the Weeks Act of 1911 was passed and allowed the federal government to purchase private land and designate and maintain it as national forest territory. This act also encouraged the federal and state governments to work together to control wildfires.

In the past few years there have been increasing calls for more comprehensive fire management policies, leading to state and local governments becoming more involved in problem definition and policy development. This has led to the creation of the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). CWPPs are policies that address impacts of wildland fires using input from state, tribal, and local governments as well as other stakeholders such as fire departments and federal agencies. This allows communities and those directly affected by the wildland fires to have greater power in the fire management strategies employed on their lands.

Impacts on Forest Management:
While wildland fire governance is still developing, a few policies have had large impacts on how fire has been managed throughout the United States. One major policy in wildland fire management is the 10 AM policy, where all fires were extinguished by 10:00 AM of the next day after they had started. This policy began in 1934 and was widely practiced until the late 1960s, leading to a large build up of fuels in forests. The accumulation of fuels created perfect conditions in the forest for uncontrollable, severe, and intense wildfires. In response, fire management policy began to remove these fuels from forests where possible and also began to allow fires to spread naturally until they posed a danger to human civilizations or other protected areas. Fire management also started to include the use of prescribed and controlled burns to imitate historic fire regimes. Before colonization and implementation of suppression policies, some indigenous communities conducted cultural burning practices for millenia, shaping much of the landscape. The Endangered Species Act has had direct conflict with wildland fire management techniques that allow fire to spread with less suppression through natural areas. Habitats of endangered species are just as susceptible to fire as other federal lands. The US Fish and Wildlife service has stated that fire management practices have been obstacles for active land management projects to protect endangered species.