Every spring, the West kicks into fire season mode. Fire agencies ramp up seasonal staffing, lawmakers propose designating fire preparedness weeks, and communities brace for months of smoky air and hazy skies. But as Justice Jones recently argued, “fire season” is becoming the wrong framing. This year, wildfire conditions began ramping up in March, which is months ahead of the traditional window. As of today, wildfires have burned nearly double the ten-year average acreage across the United States for this time of year.
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When wildfires are treated as a temporary, seasonal disruption rather than a continual, chronic risk, the default policy response is suppression. But a new analysis from PERC shows just how much that’s costing us. We are spending heavily on suppression because we spend too little on prevention. And the benefits of investing more in prevention pay off in lower taxpayer costs and healthier, more resilient forests and landscapes.
Each year, the United States spends between $394 and $893 billion in wildfire-related damages, including fire suppression costs, property damage and loss, health impacts, and disruption to communities, local economies, and ecosystems. Yet, as of 2024, the federal government spent just $649 million on hazardous fuels reduction.
The economics of wildfires in the United States are backward. And that started over a hundred years ago. For centuries, Indigenous communities practiced cultural burning with the knowledge that low-intensity fires are essential for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires and enhancing forest health. One tragic fire in 1910, the Big Burn, wreaked havoc across Montana and Idaho, killing over 80 people and charring 3 million acres of land. The Forest Service promptly formalized the “10 am rule,” which required that every wildfire be put out by 10 a.m. the morning after it was discovered. Since then, forests have become overrun with accumulated fuel, and we are still treating fire as something to extinguish rather than prevent.
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While researchers have long studied wildfire costs, most of that work has relied on computer simulations instead of real fire data. The new PERC report, carried out in conjunction with UC Davis, draws on nearly 300 wildfires across 11 western states. It looks at what happened when fires burned through land that had been treated and how that translated into real dollars saved and less severe fires.
In the Pacific Northwest, the researchers found that every dollar spent on fuel treatments in national forests saved the government between $5 and $6 in firefighting costs. Across the Western United States, each dollar spent on fuel treatments saved $3.73 in avoided property loss and health damage. Taken together, that’s $2.8 billion avoided on wildfire damages between 2017 and 2023. Fires that burned through previously treated areas covered 36 percent less total area and showed 26 percent lower rates of moderate to high severity.
Treatment size mattered greatly in effectiveness. Large-landscape scale projects, larger than 2,400 acres, were the most effective at preventing wildfire spread. Ironically, these projects are too often held up in permitting gridlock and are unable to deliver these vital results.
There are a few bills on the table right now that would make a drastic difference. The Fix Our Forests Act would streamline environmental review for fuel treatments, reduce frivolous lawsuits that delay projects, and expand categorical exclusions for high-risk landscapes. The recently House-passed FIRE Act would end the penalty on prescribed burns and ensure states are not punished under Clean Air Act standards for carrying out fuel treatments. Eliminating the 10 a.m. rule, a century-old policy that treated every fire as an emergency to be extinguished, is a welcome step forward as well.
>>>READ: Fighting Fire with Federalism
The major environmental laws governing these projects, including NEPA, ESA, and the Clean Air Act, also need reform to account for the costs of inaction. A prescribed burn delayed in the name of protecting species often leaves that habitat far worse off than a controlled burn ever would have.
It’s also worth noting that an underfunded, understaffed Forest Service cannot treat land at the scale it needs, no matter how streamlined the permitting becomes.
As Congress considers FY27 appropriations for the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Interior, the math is simple. Every dollar invested in fuel treatments returns several times over in avoided firefighting costs, healthier forests, and reduced community impact. Wildfire is no longer just a season. It is a chronic condition of the western landscape, and our policy should finally start treating it that way.
