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Vicki Christiansen, chief of the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, sits in his office in Washington, DC, on Monday.
Shuran Huang / NPR
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Shuran Huang / NPR
Vicki Christiansen, chief of the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, sits in his office in Washington, DC, on Monday.
Shuran Huang / NPR
The head of the US Forest Service warns that one billion acres across America are at risk of catastrophic fires, such as the deadly camp fire of last fall. which destroyed most of Paradise, California.
As we approach the summer, with the smoke already rushing through forest fires in Alberta, Canada, Vicki Christiansen said that wildfires are now a year – round phenomenon. She drew attention to the dangerous conditions in forests resulting from forest fire suppression, endemic housing development in high-risk areas and climate change.
"When you look nationally, there is no place where you really are at the fire season. The fire season is no longer an appropriate term, "said Christiansen in an interview with NPR at the agency's headquarters in Washington.
The Christiansen agency is the country's leading fire-fighting machine. He is trying to give priority to treatments such as thinning, brushing and burning directed on 80 million acres of his own land, mainly in the West. (His estimate in billions of acres includes lands owned by multiple federal, state, and local jurisdictions, as well as private lands.)
"Our national priority is to improve the state of forests and grasslands of our country," Christiansen said.
According to a controversial Trump administration decree calling for "active forest management," the agency has been tasked with processing 3.5 million acres this year alone, although it is lagging behind the weather and administrative difficulties. Part of the administrative policy also includes an attempt to develop commercial logging on federal lands, an objective that, according to conservation groups, will not reduce the risk of fire, unlike clearing the forest. smaller diameter wood for which the timber industry has so far found little market.
Christiansen defends what she calls a global approach.
"We are certainly focusing on wood production, but that's just one of the essential measures," she said. "We are closely monitoring the reduction of hazardous fuel consumption and the health and restoration of our laser watersheds."
Christiansen's comments follow one of the worst wildfire seasons in American history last year. Forest fires in northern California destroyed parts of entire cities and killed nearly 100 people.
Even with the pressures for greater mitigation under Christiansen, the Forest Service predicts that it could spend more than $ 2.5 billion just to fight fires this year alone. The agency has received a budget of $ 1.7 billion and will likely still need to transfer money from existing forest management and fire-fighting programs to cover the difference, a paradoxical problem which will not end before the start of reforms next year.
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