Biden administration to spend $50B to combat worsening wildfire seasons

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a $50 billion plan to fight worsening wildfire seasons at an event in Phoenix Tuesday. The plan includes sharp increases in controlled fires and logging.

“You’re going to have forest fires. The question is how catastrophic do those fires have to be,” Vilsack told the Associated Press ahead of the announcement. “The time to act is now if we want to ultimately over time change the trajectory of these fires.”

The goal is to reduce trees and other vegetation serving as tinder in high-risk areas. Those areas include California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, the east side of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, as well as parts of Arizona, Oregon and Washington state. These “hotspots” make up only 10% of the fire-prone areas across the United States. However, they account for 80% of risk to communities because of their population densities and locations.

“We know this works,” Vilsack said. “It’s removing some of the timber, in a very scientific and thoughtful way, so that at the end of the day fires don’t continue to hop from tree top to tree top, but eventually come to ground where we can put them out.”

The plan is to conduct the controlled burns and logging across 80,000 square miles of land. According to Kate Waters, a spokesperson for Vilsack, this would require an estimated $20 billion over 10 years for work on national forests and $30 billion for work on other federal, state, tribal and private lands.

Officials did not reveal specific projects ahead of the announcement, and it’s not clear who would pay for the entirety of the $50 billion price tag. The recently passed bipartisan infrastructure bill will contribute $3.2 billion for five years.

Dealing with western wildfire seasons is becoming increasingly urgent as they get more destructive and intense. There have even been rare winter blazes in recent weeks in Montana and Colorado. The fires come as a long-term “megadrought” is gripping the region. Scientists forecast temperatures will keep rising due to climate change.

“Climate change threatens our food security, safety, and the environment we all depend on,” Vilsack said in a Tuesday USDA news release on climate change. “Working closely alongside our partners and those we serve, we are conserving precious natural resources, supporting climate smart forestry and agriculture, helping agricultural producers make their operations more climate friendly and resilient to climate change, and protecting communities from wildfire.”