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Comment by S201 | Hacker News Reader

The overall Forest Service budget has indeed been increasing, but it's nearly all going to wildfire fighting. I recently wrote about the state of forest road funding and went in depth on this here: https://ephemeral.cx/2024/09/losing-access-to-the-cascades

> Overall, in 1995 16% of the Forest Service budget was dedicated to wildfires. By 2015 it was 52% and by 2025 it’s projected to be upwards of 67%. Without large amounts of additional funding it is virtually guaranteed that the Forest Service’s budget will continue to be siphoned away by firefighting needs.

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>but it's nearly all going to wildfire fighting

i.e. subsidizing states with antiquated "just don't touch it, but also fight every little fire" forest management policy

States don't get to set controlled burn policy in forests managed by the USFS, but of course they're called in to fight the inevitable fires.

There is a, non trivial, crime factor in most wildfires.

Even if "no crime ever" were somehow a policy plan, I'm not sure how this would change anything in terms of Forest Service decision-making.

If forests are maintained as a tinderbox then that's unstable, regardless of whether the immediate cause of ignition is lightning or human activity.

How relevant is that though? If eg lightning can do the same thing isnt it only a matter of time? Genuine question, im new to west coast and lightly thinking about it, arent our options ultimately either regular burns, cutting trees down, or a mix? I see the insane amounts of underbrush and it seems impossible to clear it all regularly in a cost effective way, to avoid then need to burn. But IDK, very curious.

There is a non-trivial crime factor in every crisis that provokes a large subset of society to flee.

If areas were having small semi-annual fires cleaning out the brush rather than these once per several decades monsters there wouldn't be the need for people to flee and there wouldn't be the same crime impact. And routinely dealing with small fires would make all the organizations involved better practiced when the big ones some around.

Those areas would be burning exactly the same as before, starting in 20 places at 4 AM in the most windy night of the year. The criminals just would bring a can of gasoline.

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