Vilsack On Wildfires

Vilsack On Wildfires

Vilsack On Wildfires. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke with reporters yesterday to give an update on the national wildfire season which has seen 37,119 fires this season.

VILSACK: During this fire season we have had as many as 20-thousand forest service personnel working in fire suppression. We know from reviewing the facts and figures of fire that our fire seasons are now longer in duration of anywhere from 60 to 80 days longer and clearly the fires that we are fighting often are more intense and therefore more costly.

He says the President asked them to look closely at how this was impacting the forest service budget. USDA has issued a report online at usda.gov/disaster.

VILSACK: It basically reviews the budget for the forest service over the last 10-15 years to determine trend lines and what we can see from this study is that first and foremost recently we've experienced overall reduction to the forest service budget as a result of sequester and some of the budget caps. But over the last 10-15 years we've also seen a subtle but sustained shifting of funds from other parts of the budget to fire suppression.

That has grown from 16 to 42% of that forest service budget.

VILSACK: It's a complicated situation and it really does speak to the need for a new and different way of funding fires. Particularly those more intense, more expensive fires that congress consider essentially providing 70% of the ten year average to the fire suppression budget. That will take care of 98 to 99% of the fires that we have to put out.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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