As snow blankets the Rockies and California's winter rains soak the chaparral, the smoke of the 2002 fire season settles - in the West. In the nation's capital and the media, the heat continues, the political fire fueled by the nearly $3 billion Congress gave the Forest Service and Department of Interior to fight and suppress wildland fires. In the past 5 years, an average of 4.7 million acres burned, and weather forecasters give us little hope that 2003 will be different.
For westerners, the issue is immediate, whether merely the annoyance of hazy skies and ash on the porch or ongoing nightmares of diminished health and destroyed property. But the fires aren't just a western issue. Throughout the late summer and fall, accusations made headlines in the news as government agencies and environmental groups blamed each other for the fires this time and warned of those to come.
Randal O'Toole, senior economist at the Thoreau Institute, known critic of governmental spending policies, and author of Reforming the Forest Service, studied the fire issue. Specifically, he was concerned with the so-called "fuels build-up" debate, but in the process of questioning the reality of fuels build-up as a cause of recent catastrophic fires, he offers an excellent example of how economic reasoning can help us sort out current issues.
In "Incentives, Not Fuels, Are Endangering Forests," O'Toole lays out the fire data he gathered. The first thing he found was that recent fires may not really be so catastrophic when we look at the historical picture:
"All the data I found indicate fires today are no worse than would be expected considering recent droughts. . . .
Wildland fires burned more acres in 2000 than in any of the previous 40 years. But the average of the last five years, 4.7 million acres per year, is only slightly more than the 4.6 million acres burned per year in the early 1960s. Since 1960, the five-year average of acres burned has fluctuated between 2.7 and 5.3 million acres depending on the drought cycle.
The number of firefighters killed has grown from an average of eight per year in the 1950s to 17 per year in the 1990s. At first glance, this suggests fires have grown more dangerous. . . .
Not so. The number of firefighters who died from fires has fallen, from 6.5 a year in the 1950s to 5.5 a year in the 1990s. But the number who died in aircraft and motor vehicle accidents increased dramatically, from 1 per year in the 1950s to 6 per year in the 1990s, suggesting the Forest Service is making a lot more use of such vehicles. . . . "
After studying the data, O'Toole concluded that the recent upsurge in fire suppression costs resulted from 3 clearly identifiable causes:
- drought and the "fairly typical" increase in fires during drought cycles;
- the increasing number of homes in the so-called wildland - urban interface; and
- the incentives facing the Forest Service.
Examining the third cause, the incentives facing the Forest Service, is an excellent way to learn about "public choice theory," the strand of economic thinking that considers the incentives in collective decision making.
Read the following excerpts from Randal O'Toole's article,
"Incentives, not fuels are endangering forests,"
and then answer the questions that follow.