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Fire Chronicle #8
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Laura McCarthy, Forest Trust
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May 06, 2002 09:24 PDT
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FIRE CHRONICLE: Stories of the National Fire Plan
Number 8
May 6, 2002
ACCOUNTABILITY REMAINS A KEY ISSUE FOR NATIONAL FIRE PLAN
By Laura McCarthy
The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has repeatedly criticized the
USDA Forest Service and the Department of Interior for their handling of
the national fire plan. The agencies recently had an opportunity to
counter the GAO’s assertions about poor accountability with their own
report to Congress, the "FY2001 Performance Report, National Fire Plan."
Released in February 2002, the agency performance report presents
first-year results of implementing the national fire plan. This issue of
the Fire Chronicle provides a review of the agency performance as
presented in their report.
The "FY2001 Performance Report, National Fire Plan" has two primary
strengths. First, it includes extensive summary information about the
expenditure of fire plan funds authorized through the 2001 Interior and
Related Agencies Appropriation Act P.L. 106-291. The information is
comprehensive and organized by agency, region, and state. Second, the
report includes state-by-state maps of hazardous fuel reduction
treatments. Included with each map is a list of hazardous fuel reduction
projects and the lead agency responsible for the project. These maps
show where fire plan funds are being used to treat hazardous fuels.
In spite of the report’s strengths, it is very difficult to use the
financial information or maps to make an accurate assessment of whether
the hazardous fuel reduction treatments took place in communities
considered to be at greatest risk of wildfire. The difficulty can be
partially explained by the process that was used to identify these
communities in the first place. Congress asked the agencies to prepare a
list of communities at high-risk of wildfire within 90 days of the
appropriation. Congress intended that the agencies work together to set
national priorities for hazardous fuel reduction treatment. However,
rather than collaborating to set criteria, collect information, and
assign priorities, the Forest Service and Interior asked the states and
tribes to develop their own lists of high-risk communities. Furthermore,
the agencies did not set any minimum standards for data or criteria to
be used. For example, California developed its list with 15-years of
accumulated data and maps about fire and development patterns, while New
Mexico asked its fire managers to compile a matrix of community position
relative to fuel buildup and prevailing winds, population density, and
percent forest cover.
At the same time that the states and tribes were compiling their lists
of high risk communities, Region 3 of the Forest Service was creating a
map to identify wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas. The WUI mapping
was part of a package the Forest Service submitted to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service to obtain a programmatic biological opinion on
hazardous fuel reduction treatment in WUI. Maps of the two-state region
were created with a 1/2 mile buffer of WUI surrounding all National
Forest boundaries and private in-holdings. The WUI zones did not
distinguish densely populated areas and forested subdivisions from areas
with uninhabited structures or undeveloped property. No effort was made
to prioritize these WUI areas or to link them to the communities at risk
identified by the states.
The Forest Service field units were also given little guidance about
criteria to use to select projects for hazardous fuel reduction funds.
In New Mexico, the national forests had information from the state list
of high priority communities and the regional WUI map to consider. Any
linking of the state identified communities and wildland-urban
interfaces was up to the individual forests, and this task was made more
difficult by the fact that many of the state identified “communities”
were actually entire counties or broad geographic areas with many
individually recognized towns within them.
Since there was no clear process for coordinating the federal agency
selection of WUI areas for treatment with the states' identification of
communities at risk, it is very difficult to compare the results of the
two processes using data from the "FY2001 Performance Report, National
Fire Plan." The lists of hazardous fuel reduction treatment accomplished
by the Forest Service and Interior are not easily matched with the
states' lists of communities. Two possible explanations for the
difficulty of this comparison are that: (1) different criteria were used
to identify and delineate the areas (and the criteria were not included
with any of the lists); and (2) different names were used to identify
priority areas, with the federal agencies using project names and the
states using community names.
The Forest Trust tested this hypothesis by collecting data from the
Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico and compiling a map of projects
that were funded at least in part by 2001 Interior Appropriations
hazardous fuel reduction dollars. Project activities included thinning,
prescribed burning, and new project planning. The locally-collected data
was used to evaluate the list of FY2001 New Mexico Fuels Treatment Sites
included in the "FY2001 Performance Report, National Fire Plan." The
comparison revealed that most of the information in the report was
accurate.
The Trust also compared the list of projects in the report to a state
list of projects found on the New Mexico Forestry Division’s website
(identified as NM FY2001 Statewide Urban Interface Projects by Agency).
Again, the comparison focused on Santa Fe National Forest projects. The
two lists were very difficult to cross-reference. Many of the projects
on the state agency list were absent from the federal list in the report
and vice versa. Without an explanation on either list about the criteria
used to decide which projects to list, it was not possible to determine
if the discrepancies were because the federal list included wildland
fuel reduction projects and the state list focused on wildland urban
interface projects. Furthermore, the federal list used project names and
the state list used community names.
Reports like the "FY2001 Performance Report, National Fire Plan" give
the agencies a chance to speak for themselves about accountability. When
the information in these reports can be validated by a third-party –
whether it is the GAO or a non-governmental organization - the agency’s
reputation for accountability is bolstered. Unfortunately, some of the
critical information in the "FY2001 Performance Report, National Fire
Plan" does not lend itself to independent validation. From the agencies
own report we can tell that the appropriation was spent. However, the
fragmented process of federal and state initiatives to identify priority
needs made it difficult to evaluate whether the funds appropriated for
hazardous fuel reduction went to protect the high-risk communities.
FIRE CHRONICLE is edited by the Forest Trust. We welcome your comments
about the issue of defining the wildland-urban interface, as well as
stories and observations about how the national fire plan is being
implemented (just send a reply message and it will go to the list
moderator). To subscribe to FIRE CHRONICLE or to read past issues go to
http://www.topica.com/lists/firechronicles/ or send an email message to
lau-@theforesttrust.org
COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIP COMMUNICATOR is an electronic bulletin that
provides information about the national Community Stewardship
Collaborative’s effort to find solutions to issues related to
large-scale watershed projects on the national forests and the national
fire plan. The bulletin is prepared by the Pinchot Institute for
Conservation and is available by contacting nra-@pinchot.org
PAST ISSUES OF FIRE CHRONICLE:
1. 2002 Fire Plan Appropriations will Benefit from 2001 Experience
2. Wildland-Urban Interface Definition a Barrier to Accountability
3. Stewardship Blocks: Innovative Tool Brings Fire Plan Benefits into
Community
4. Youth Training Needed for Fire Plan to Benefit Local Workforce
5. Grants Get National Fire Plan Money into Communities
6. Collaborative Forest Restoration Program Creates New Solution to
Gridlock
7. Permits Regulate Prescribed Burning On Private Land
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