Century of Fire Suppression Created Forest Tinderbox Crisis

Why It Matters

A century of fire suppression policy has allowed combustible vegetation to accumulate across tens of millions of acres of federal land. A new Congressional Research Service report on the hazardous fuels of wildfire mitigation lays out the scale of the problem facing federal land managers, and the legislative and administrative gaps that have left these lands increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic fire.

Many researchers, according to the report, assert that continuing to suppress all fires will lead to less safe burn conditions over time, producing larger and more severe wildfires. Yet the tools available to address the problem, including prescribed burning, mechanical thinning, targeted grazing, and herbicide application, each carry their own costs, risks, and limitations.

Meanwhile, the landscape where fires cause the most damage keeps growing. The wildland-urban interface (WUI), where human development meets undeveloped wilderness, grew by one-third between 1990 and 2010, from 224,325 square miles to 297,298 square miles. The number of homes in that zone grew by 41 percent, from 30.8 million to 43.4 million. More people living closer to more fuel means the stakes of getting the forest fuel reduction policy wrong keep rising.

The Big Picture

The report, updated May 8, 2026, covers the full landscape of wildfire prevention policy, from the science of how fuels behave, to the federal agencies responsible for managing them, to the legislation that Congress is actively considering.

Five federal agencies across two departments are responsible for the majority of hazardous fuels mitigation on federal and tribal lands. They include the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management under the Agriculture Department, as well as the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Interior Department.

The primary statutory framework governing this work is the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, passed by the 108th Congress, which created expedited processes and categorical exclusions from full environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act for certain fuel reduction projects on National Forest System and BLM lands.

The report notes that the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires, described as the costliest in U.S. history, began in grass and shrub areas, not forests. Wildfire prevention policy debates have historically centered on forests, but grass and shrub fires burned 64 percent of homes destroyed in wildfires between 1990 and 2020. Non-forested lands present particular challenges because fine fuels dry out quickly; fire risk can change rapidly after wet seasons; and invasive species can dramatically increase horizontal fuel continuity, which is the spatial distribution and connection of wildland fuels.

Wildfire Mitigation Hazardous Fuels: The Tools and Their Limits

Prescribed burning is described as generally the most cost-effective approach per acre, and the Forest Service reports that more than 99 percent of approximately 4,500 prescribed fires conducted per year go as planned. But the consequences when they don't are severe. The risk of escaped fires, combined with smoke impacts to nearby communities, creates political and liability concerns that cause fire managers to pull back from using prescribed burning even when conditions are favorable.

In 2022, the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon fires in New Mexico (one of which was an escaped prescribed burn) merged and burned nearly 400,000 acres and several hundred homes. In 2025, the Dragon Bravo fire in Arizona, a natural ignition that the National Park Service initially managed for resource objectives, escaped containment and burned more than 145,500 acres, destroying more than 113 structures including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge and forcing the closure of the North Rim.

Mechanical treatments, including thinning, timber harvesting, and mastication, allow more precise control but are generally more costly than prescribed fire. The report also says studies indicate they are not effective unless accompanied by use of wildland fires or other surface fuel removal. Heavy equipment can also cause erosion, soil compaction, and the spread of invasive species.

Targeted grazing can be cost-effective and scalable in grassland and shrubland systems, but it's ineffective against woody fuels and unlikely to limit tree-top crown fires during severe winds and low fuel moisture.

Herbicide application allows precise species targeting, but it may take years to reduce fuel loading (the accumulation of vegetation, branches and debris), and it leaves dead fuels on the surface that may need additional removal.

The report also covers cultural burning, the Indigenous practice of cultivating fire on the landscape for millennia. The Karuk Tribe, cited in the report, describes cultural burning as "typically less formal than prescribed burning" while integrating "holistic knowledge of place." Some have recommended that federal agencies develop new procedures that proactively cooperate with cultural practitioners.

Political Stakes

For the Administration

The Trump administration has promoted aggressive forest management and logging on federal lands, and the USDA Forest Service released a "National Active Forest Management Strategy" in May 2025. The CRS report cites that document as evidence that the agency views workforce capacity and collaborative partnerships as essential to achieving the required scale of hazardous fuels work.

But workforce shortages are already among the most significant barriers to getting fuel treatments done. The federally mandated Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission found that "hiring, recruitment, and retention of the workforce are some of the most significant gaps within the existing wildfire mitigation and management system." The Nature Conservancy identified a lack of trained crews as one of the top reasons prescribed burns are not executed during the short windows when weather is favorable. Any reduction in federal agency staffing would directly undermine the administration's stated forest management goals.

For Congress

The report frames three core questions that remain unresolved, namely whether existing authorities and programs are adequate; what is slowing the pace and scale of project implementation; and whether agencies are tracking progress with meaningful oversight.

On accountability, the picture is not encouraging. A 2016 USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report found the Forest Service overstated its hazardous fuels accomplishments, and also had difficulty determining what it spent on fuel reduction. A 2024 OIG report found that the agency tracked multiple Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provisions in a single budget line item, making independent accounting of hazardous fuels spending impossible. The commonly used "acres treated" metric may actually work against effective spending, because agencies could prioritize low-cost-per-acre projects that are not strategically located, even if more targeted treatments would provide greater risk reduction.

The 119th Congress has introduced a substantial volume of congressional wildfire legislation in response. The Fix Our Forests Act (S. 1462/H.R. 471) would expand the applicability of categorical exclusions under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, and reform the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) litigation for specified projects. The National Prescribed Fire Act of 2025 (S. 2015/H.R. 3889) would increase pay for federal employees conducting prescribed fire work, and allow specified hazardous fuels appropriations to train federal and non-federal groups. The ACRES Act (H.R. 204) would require agencies to submit accurate reports on hazardous fuels reduction activities, including treatment costs, location relative to wildfire risk, and type of activity.

The Bottom Line

The federal government does not have a clear statutory requirement to broadly reduce hazardous fuels. Also, no single definition of hazardous fuels applies across all public lands, and no federal program is specifically dedicated to hazardous fuel reduction assistance for non-federal landowners. That patchwork of authorities, combined with workforce shortages, environmental review timelines, and inconsistent tracking, has produced a system where the pace of treatment consistently falls short of the scale of the problem.

Treatments generally reduce wildfire severity for 10 to 20 years after implementation, but must then be repeated. In the meantime, the wildland-urban interface keeps expanding, fire seasons keep lengthening, and the accumulated fuel load on millions of acres of federal land is not getting smaller.

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