Do Fuel Treatments Mitigate the Cost of Wildfires? Evidence from the Northwest Forest Plan
with Matthew Reimer
Abstract:
Increases in the frequency and magnitude of wildfires have resulted in significant economic costs and damages in recent decades. This study explores the degree to which fuel treatments, commonly promoted by fire ecologists as a means of restoring forest health, reduce the size and cost of fighting wildfires. We investigate fires igniting on U.S. Forest Service land in the Pacific Northwest between 2006 and 2023, using exogenous variation in fuel treatments arising from a system of protected areas designed to conserve the northern spotted owl and old growth forest. We find that fires starting in the protected areas are less likely to occur close to fuel treatments and are more costly to suppress, on average. Conservative back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that three-and-a-half dollars are saved in fire suppression costs for every dollar spent on fuel treatments. We also find that fuel treatments do reduce fire size, though this effect is offset by the endogenous allocation of fire suppression effort away from fires intersecting with fuel treatments. Taken together, our results suggest that environmental protections have increased the public burden of fighting wildfires and, ironically, put the species they were intended to protect at higher risk.