Managing the Impact of Wildfires on Communities and the Environment

Publisher Marketing: On August 8, 2000, President Clinton asked Secretaries Babbitt and Glickman to prepare a report that recommends how best to respond to this year's severe fires, reduce the impacts of these wildland fires on rural communities, and ensure sufficient firefighting resources in the future. The President also asked for short-term actions that Federal agencies, in cooperation with States, local communities and Tribes, can take to reduce immediate hazards to communities in the wildland-urban interface and to ensure that land managers and firefighter personnel are prepared for extreme fire conditions in the future. This report recommends a Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 budget for the wildland fire programs of the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior of $2.8 billion. Included within this total is an increase of nearly $1.6 billion above the President's FY 2001 budget request in support of the report's recommendations. This includes additional funding of about $340 million for fire preparedness resources, new funding of $88 million to increase cooperative programs in support of local communities, and approximately $390 million for fuels treatment and burned area restoration. The increase also includes about $770 million to replenish and enhance the Departments' fire suppression accounts, which have been depleted by this year's extraordinary costs, and to repay FY 2000 emergency transfers from other appropriations accounts.