Wyden Addresses Broken Wildfire System

Senator Ron Wyden continues to emphasize the costs of congressional inaction when it comes to fixing the broken system of wildfire funding.  Since 2013, Wyden, along with Idaho senators Mike Crapol and James Risch, have worked on a long-term solution to fix the way the federal government funds wildfire suppression.  The hope, according to Wyden, to free up more funding for fire prevention and other forest management work in Oregon’s forests and across the country.

"This is a broken, common-sense-defying system of fighting fire, where you borrow from prevention to put the fires out and the problem just gets worse."

During a Senate hearing last week, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told lawmakers the cost of not having a long-term wildfire budget solution has prevented the Forest Service from managing millions of forest acres.

“Our challenge is to be able to get to the place where we can right size our budget, so we become more of that active management agency, and yes we’ll continue the wildfire suppression job and we’ll continue to excel at that.”

Tidwell continued the lack of forest management has exacerbated the severity and size of wildfires as the agency is forced to fund fire suppression by borrowing funds from forest management programs.

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