Wildland Fire: Federal Agencies' Efforts to Reduce Wildland Fuels and Lower Risk to Communities and Ecosystems, and Climate Change: Potential Economic Costs and Opportunities to Reduce Federal Fiscal Exposure

Two reports are reproduced in this compilation: Wildland Fire: Federal Agencies' Efforts to Reduce Wildland Fuels and Lower Risk to Communities and Ecosystems, and Climate Change: Potential Economic Costs and Opportunities to Reduce Federal Fiscal Exposure.

Wildland Fire: Wildfires have been increasing in size and severity, exacerbated by abnormally dense vegetation, drought, and other climate stressors. Development in and around wildlands also continues to increase, placing more people at risk from wildfires. To reduce vegetation that can fuel such fires, federal land management agencies implement fuel reduction projects on public lands. GAO was asked to examine the federal government's preparedness, response, and recovery efforts following the wildfires and other natural disasters of 2017. This report describes (1) methods federal agencies use to reduce fuels to help protect communities and ecosystems, (2) information the agencies considered in allocating fuel reduction funds in fiscal year 2018, and (3) factors affecting agency efforts to implement fuel reduction projects. GAO examined laws, regulations, and agency policies and budget documents; interviewed federal agency officials at headquarters, as well as in eight regional offices and 10 field units selected based on their locations' high wildland fire hazard potential; and interviewed officials from nonfederal entities, including representatives from the state forestry agencies for the seven states where selected field units were located (three field units were in California and two were in New Mexico).

Climate Change: Since 2005, federal funding for disaster assistance is at least $450 billion, including approximately $19.1 billion in supplemental appropriations signed into law on June 6, 2019. In 2018 alone, there were 14 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events across the United States, with a total cost of at least $91 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. Global Change Research Program projects that disaster costs will likely increase as certain extreme weather events become more frequent and intense due to climate change. The costs of recent weather disasters have illustrated the need for planning for climate change risks and investing in resilience. Resilience is the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events, according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Investing in resilience can reduce the need for far more costly steps in the decades to come. Since February 2013, GAO has included Limiting the Federal Government's Fiscal Exposure by Better Managing Climate Change Risks on its list of federal program areas at high risk of vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or most in need of transformation. GAO updates this list every 2 years. In March 2019, GAO reported that the federal government had not made measurable progress since 2017 to reduce fiscal exposure to climate change.

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