Forest Fires Out West Hit White Mountain Forest Budget

MULLEN: The Supervisor of the White Mountain National Forest has
12-hundred miles of hiking trails to maintain, 24 million board feet of timber to harvest each year.

There’s wildlife to protect, recreation fees to collect, and hiking and camping regulations to enforce, and on top of all that, Tom Wagner is worried about how clean the forest’s bathrooms are.

WAGNER: Any study that you do of people’s visit to the national forest, one of the ways they reflect on what they think of the place, is the condition of the bathrooms…

MULLEN: On a drive around the Forest, Wagner pulls over at a picnic site in Twin Mountain, and stops in front of two brown toilet shacks.

WAGNER: We’re at Beaver Brook Day Use site, which has picnic sites, in the winter time it’s used for cross country skiing, and it has bathrooms.

MULLEN: The parking lot area looks clean, but inside the bathrooms -- dirty floors, pieces of toilet paper, some bugs and spider webs...

Wagner says this place needs attention every few days, but that’s tough this year because of budget cuts.

WAGNER: People some places would say, well what’s the big deal, who cares if anybody maintains this bathroom up here in the middle of northern NH, well I can tell ya, my phone’ll ring off the hook, and many people will care.

MULLEN: This year, Forest Service cut the budget for the White Mountains by almost a million dollars.

It was the largest reduction out of all 16 national forests in the eastern region.

That meant Wagner could afford to hire only 18 seasonal workers this summer, out of the usual 60 he needs to clean bathrooms and campgrounds, maintain trails, rescue lost hikers.

The budget cut could also affect the public timber sale program, a major source of revenue for the forest, and part of its wildlife habitat management plan.

Wagner reduced its budget by 25 percent this year, and he had to reassign some of its staff to Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest, which could afford to pay their salaries.

The Forest Service blames the budget cuts on rising federal deficit and the cost of the war on terror.

But there’s another growing problem that’s consuming more of the agency’s budget every year.

Forest Fire.

The Forest Service has spent more than a billion dollars fighting wildfires in four of the last seven seasons.

Many western states are dealing with long-term drought, and some scientists believe wildfires are increasing in number and strength because of climate change.

Another factor is increasing development – Wagner says today, a lot more people live in places where in the past, the Forest Service used to let just wildfires burn.

WAGNER: We as a society have not come to grips with some of that, we will not stand by and let people’s homes burn up.

MULLEN: The result: a decade when every fire season has been more expensive than the last, so every season took up more of the Forest Service budget.

In the mid-90s, the agency spent less than 20 percent of its budget fighting fires…

That portion is now up to 45 percent.

Forest Service Budget Director Lenise Lago, who’s been with the agency for 30 years, says she’s awed by that increase.

LAGO: When I first entered the Forest Service, we didn’t get separate funds for fire suppression. They’d appropriate a place holder of $1 million dollars which seems… almost laughable now.

MULLEN: Lago says as the agency’s fire costs have increased, funding for almost all other Forest Service programs has decreased, including the operation of national forests like the White Mountain.

LAGO: It changes the complexion of the agency, it changes who we are.

MULLEN: The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, and it’s the largest forestry research organization in the world.

But some critics say these days, the Forest Service might as well be re-named the Fire Service.

A few lawmakers from western states have proposed setting up an emergency account for wildfire costs, that’s separate from the Forest Service budget.

New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg says he’d support that idea:

GREGG: There’s no question that subjecting the daily operation accounts of the Forest Service to having to carry the burden of catastrophic fires, most of which occur in the west, of course, puts a disproportionate burden on just day to day operations. Yes we should separate the 2 out, figure out some equitable way to fund them both.

MULLEN: Gregg is on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he says he’s working to restore some of the White Mountain funding that was cut this year, and preventing the forest from losing money again in 2008.

While he works on Washington, in the White Mountains, Tom Wagner is doing his best to keep the 6 to 7 million people who visit the forest annually, from seeing the effects of this year’s budget cut.

One place tourists might see the evidence anyway, besides the bathrooms, is where Wagner’s had to cut back hours at some attractions.

WAGNER: Well this is the Russell Colbath house, which is an historic homestead for the Pasaconaway Valley.

MULLEN: Wagner says this house is one of the most popular stops on the Kancamagus Highway, which runs through the middle of the Forest.

WAGNER: we have a living interpreter who stays in here, now 5 days a week. Last Summer it would have been 7 days a week. Basically it’s one of the places where, with less money, we had to make some decisions to reduce some of the staff.

MULLEN: Wagner hasn’t had to lay anyone off, or raise recreation fees yet.

And he’s had some help with extra trail maintenance from private groups like the Appalachian Mountain Club.

But he says on top of this year’s budget cut, there’s another way forest fires could siphon money from the White Mountain.

WAGNER: At some point they’re going to come and say to me, how much money do you have left in your budget, here on the White Mountain.

MULLEN: It’s called fire transfer – if the Forest Service spends the 1-point-2 billion dollars it set aside for firefighting this season, the agency can take funds from its other accounts.

A spokesman says he can’t predict whether fire transfer will kick in this year, or whether the White Mountains’ budget will have to be tapped.

So far the agency has spent 820 million dollars fighting fires that have burned more than 6 million acres of land.

That’s two thirds of its total, and a hundred million dollars more than it spent by this time last year.

And fire season, which can run into November, is only half-way over.

For NHPR News, I’m SM.