Rocky Mountain states can reduce wildfire danger and better contain the soaring cost of firefighting by investing in far more aggressive efforts to reduce the buildup of forest fuels around houses, neighborhoods and communities, Western Progress’ Steve Woodruff told a Montana legislative committee studying wildland fire suppression.

The legislature’s Fire Suppression Interim Committee, kicking off the first in a series of statewide hearings April 28, invited Western Progress to outline an ambitious plan for a tenfold increase in fuel reduction in the so-called wildland-urban interface or WUI.

Unhealthy forest conditions, a warming climate and expanding residential development in fire-prone areas produce wildfires of great size, intensity and danger throughout the West. As the problem goes from bad to worse, firefighting costs are straining state budgets.

Woodruff, deputy director of Western Progress’ Northern Region office in Missoula, warned that current fuel reduction efforts in the WUI are grossly inadequate.

“At the rate the West is burning, wildfires are likely to burn over much of the wildland-urban interface before we can clear out the fuels,” he said. “At the rate we’re going, fire-suppression costs will soar by hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming decades because the amount of fuel reduction we’re doing isn’t enough to make a difference.”

Woodruff called for Montana to invest $10 million annually over the coming decade in fuel reduction on private and state lands in the WUI,  funding the project with a fire insurance premium surcharge and modest property tax levy.

“We can’t get a handle on wildfire costs without some proactive investments, and we can’t make those investments without tapping new streams of revenue,” he said. “We’re dealing with an expensive problem that didn’t exist a generation ago. We can’t do it using only the sources of revenue we tapped long before this problem developed.”

Full testimony attached.