U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today called for changes to the way the U.S. Forest Service handles wildfires in response to the increasing severity and costliness of wildfires in Alaska and across the West.

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Murkowski, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell, at a hearing Tuesday before the committee on wildfire management policies, that the agency needs to focus on policies that responsibly fund wildfire suppression, end the unsustainable practice of fire borrowing, help communities conduct firewise practices to guard against property damage wildland-urban interface, and make necessary investments in a range of fuel treatments. 

As the expense of fighting wildfires has grown, the Forest Service has exceeded its budget and instead relied on funding borrowed from other programs to cover the costs. Murkowski called the practice of “fire borrowing” unsustainable and said the agency needs to stop treating every wildfire like a disaster. Instead, she said, the agency needs to make a greater effort to improve the resiliency of public lands by better managing underbrush and other fuel sources through thinning and prescribed burns to reduce the damage when fires do occur.

“It is looking more and more like the Forest Service is morphing into an emergency fire service that throws everything it has at every wildfire, whether effective or not,” Murkowski said. “We need a paradigm shift from fire control at all costs to actual fire management.”

Murkowski focused her questions at the hearing on rising fire suppression costs even while the number of fires has actually declined.

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“Fire suppression costs are out of control, yet there has been less than half the number of fires, less than half the number of acres burned, and less than half the number of houses burned,” Murkowski said. “We need to strategically address the fuel accumulation problem in our forests and integrate our fuels management objective into the wildfire management operations because ‘hoping’ for a tame fire season simply won’t work.” 

While the threat of a major wildfire is predominately an issue in the West, Alaska is not immune. Last May, the Funny River Fire burned through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, spreading smoke as far as Fairbanks, more than 500 miles away. The fire burned nearly 200,000 acres before it was finally extinguished, making it the second-largest ever recorded on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.

The Funny River Fire was likely started by human activity, but the area has also changed dramatically in the last 20 years, due in part to mass spruce bark beetle kill. Grasses have replaced forests, and those grasses are simply more susceptible to fire. More than half of the Peninsula’s total forested land, nearly a million acres, has been lost.

“It’s critical that we responsibly fund the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s wildfire suppression needs and stop the cycle of fire borrowing,” Murkowski said. “I am concerned though that suppression costs are out of control. Wildfire suppression and its costs are economically, socially and ecologically unsustainable. I know the Forest Service wants a wildfire cap adjustment but I don’t see how that is going to be the silver bullet to addressing skyrocketing wildfire suppression spending.”