Background and Context

Compared to expenditures on fire suppression, there has historically been limited funding for pre-fire fuel management, ecosystem restoration, and long-term maintenance of fuel treatments.  A cyclical pattern of increased employment in ecosystem restoration work has traditionally been followed by a decline in funding 5-10 years after program initiation. This boom-and-bust pattern of funding has persisted for more than 50 years and has resulted in high costs, social disruption, and loss of skilled workers. These fluctuations in government investment have been coupled with private and federal procurement processes that have resulted in favoring highly mobile firms, utilization of H2B immigrant labor, and wage theft and labor abuse. Some private firms have strategically balanced profitability based on largess from wildland fire suppression for labor retention with low-bid service contracting, resulting in artificially low costs for forestry services and creating a barrier to access for smaller local businesses.

Much of the fire mitigation and suppression repair work currently done under emergency operations could be undertaken year-round at a far lower cost per unit of outcome.  For example, construction of fuel breaks, thinning of dense forest stands, and prescribed fire can be accomplished any time that weather conditions allow.  Planned stand treatments can create key fire suppression features (i.e., PODs) where they are desired on the landscape, rather than having them reactively built during fire suppression. In this way construction can include the environmental, cultural, and other impact review that may be omitted during emergency operations. The ability to identify and determine the desired level of ground disturbance can reduce impacts and costs compared to “on-the-fly” decision making.

For federal lands, there are existing models to shift greater amounts of work to local contractors. These include Stewardship End-Results Contracting (Stewardship Contracts and Agreements), which allows combination of restoration services and forest-product harvest into a single project (trading goods for services), or retention of timber receipts for use in subsequent service contracting. Another model is the Good Neighbor Agreement, which allows for cooperative leveraging of resources with state and local governments, special districts, and Tribes. Prescribed fire and mechanical fuel treatments are among several types of ecosystem management projects eligible to use these instruments. These authorities allow federal agencies to engage in multi-year contracts (up to 20 years), award contracts based on best value (versus lowest cost), collaborate on project design based on desired end results, trade goods for services and/or retained timber receipts, and bundle service activities and other related practices.